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The Little Black Master; 



OR, 



TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 



BY 

f 

ERNEST F. WEBB. 



A pure mind in a clean body is the mother of wisdom. 







BOSTON: 

PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR. 

1891 




Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1891, by 

ERNEST F. WEBB, 
In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



Typography and Presswork hy J. W. Hamilton. 102 High St. 



PREFACE. 



Notes upon the origin of tobacco and alcohol. 
Notes upon the history of tobacco and alcohol. 
Also describing the evil effects of these poisons 
upon the system, warning young people against 
their use, and endeavoring to do so, have collected 
notes of great men's knowledge on the subject, 
notes and experiences of doctors, chemists, pro- 
fessors of colleges and medical academies, both in 
Europe and America. Our libraries and book- 
stores are filled w T ith books for the benefit and 
pleasure of humanity, many warning young people 
against the use of narcotics, and describing the ill 
effects of their use. I ask a small corner for this 
little book, which tries to describe a deep, swift 
stream by which half of the young people are 
being borne away into darkness. It also points 
out a path along which boys and youths may march 
away from danger. 



I DEDICATE THIS BOOK 

TO THE 

BOYS AND YOUTHS OF AMERICA, 

WITH THE HOPE 

THAT IT MAY CONTRIBUTE SOMETHING 

TO THEIR HAPPINESS AND WELFARE. * 

With sincere 1'egards, 

THE AUTHOR. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Introduction, yii 

Opening Remarks, 9 

Origin and History of Tobacco, 11 

Description of the Plant and its Properties, .... 11 

Examples of Boy and Girl, 19 

Cigarettes, 21 

How Tobacco leads to Drink and Crime, 22 

Tendency of the Habit to Increase and to be Trans- 
mitted, - . - 25 

Legislation against it, 26 

Tobacco and Self-interest, 27 

Its Effect on School Work, 29 

The Schoolmaster's Address, 31 

P. T. Barnum's Address, 33 

A Little Boy's Recitation, 35 

A Schoolboy's Remarks, 36 

How Tobacco affected Thirty-eight Boys, .... 39 

How Tobacco affected the Maoris, ........ 39 

How Tobacco weakens Body and Mind, and checks 

Growth, 40 

Physiological Action of Tobacco, 40 

Testimony of Physicians and Noted Men against it, . 42 

Dr. Talmage's Advice, 44 

What John Quincy Adams says, 45 

What the Educators and what the Newspapers say, . 45 

Conclusion to be drawn, 47 

Insurance Agent's Dream, 52 

Stories, 61 

How to leave off Tobacco, 69 

Alcohol. 

How Alcohol was discovered, . 71 

Alcoholic Appetite, 71 

Strong Drink, 72 



VI . CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

A Rich Rumseller, 74 

Delirium Tremens, 76 

Sailor and Soldier, 77 

What Two Little Girls did, 85 

Story of the Engineer, 97 

Not Poverty, but Beer, 103 

Concluding Poem, no 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

The Author, 

The Ship, 14 

George Washington, .• . . . 15 

Indian, 18 

Sick Boy, 19 

Justice, 26 

Schoolmaster and Scholars, 30 

P. T. Barnum, 32 

Mother and Boy, . . . . . 35 

Small Boy, . . 36 

A Contrast, 38 

Group, . 48 

The Little Anti-Tobacco Preacher, 50 

Insurance Agent, 52 

Wife Pleading with her Husband, 66 

Rich Rumseller, . ; 74 

Delirium Tremens, 76 

The Sailor, 77 

Soldiers, 78 

Maloy's Saloon, 85 

Engine, 97 



INTRODUCTION. 



My object in writing this little book is to make 
an impression upon the minds of all the boys who 
read it that will be lasting and full of the right ele- 
ment. The subject upon which I have written is 
principally tobacco, a subject upon which I con- 
sider every boy should be thoroughly posted and 
aware of its poisonous and injurious effects upon 
the body and mind, especially upon one who has 
not arrived at a full growth. I have quoted testi- 
monials and statements in this book which I be- 
lieve will be impressive and effective with boys who 
read them. 

I have written some short stories and anecdotes 
which will be interesting, as well as instructive, to 
all who read them. 

I have also taken pains to select evidence against 
tobacco which I believe to be in every respect true 
and reliable, and I have guarded against making 
any statements which are not facts, and all are 



Vlll INTRODUCTION. 

substantiated by the most reliable authority both 
in America and Europe. 

I have not, however, confined the contents of 
my book exclusively to tobacco, but have written a 
few pages on the subject of strong drink and its 
effects. I consider liquor a very near relative of 
tobacco ; the former, of course, much worse, espe- 
cially if carried to excess. Cigarette smoking is 
very popular among boys of all ages, and it is 
claimed by good authority to be more injurious 
than cigars or any other form of tobacco. 

I am indebted to some of the publications of 
H. L. Hastings, of Boston, for a few of the most 
effective stories in the book. 



The Little Black Master; 

OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 



My Dear Youi>§ Reader • 




) LEASE give me 
your attention 
for a while. I want you to 
feel that I am interested in 
your welfare, and if I fail to 
interest you, I shall give you 
some advice which you will ap- 
preciate more when you are older than 
you will now. But I am confident 
there are many small boys, as well as 
large ones, who do appreciate good 
advice, and who are wise and sensible 
enough to profit by it. You know you 
want good health so ycu can go to school, play, 



IO THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 

and attend to other duties which you may have to 
perform. Perhaps you sell papers or black boots 
to help buy your clothes, or perhaps your father i3 
well off, so you are not obliged to do such work. 
You may be clerk in some large store down 
town, or errand boy in a large bank. You 
may be studying with the aspiration of becom- 
ing a doctor, lawyer, or clergyman, or perhaps 
governor. As for that, it makes little difference 
what your work is, so long as it is honorable and 
respectable. Whatever work you do, you want to 
feel well, look well, and respect yourself ; but if you 
smoke cigarettes, or use tobacco in any form, you 
cannot be well, look well, nor respect yourself as 
much as you should. You cannot be well, as 
tobacco causes parts of your body to become dis- 
eased as soon as you commence using it, although 
you may not be aware of the fact. You cannot 
look well, because no young man or boy looks well 
with a cigar or pipe in his mouth. If you doubt 
my word, place either in your mouth and look in 
the glass. I have done the same thing myself, and 
was thoroughly convinced that it did not improve 
my appearance, but rather disfigured it. You can- 
not respect yourself as much as you should, as the 
action of the nicotine on the nervous system, of 
which the brain is the centre, will not allow you to 
do so. It might not make you sick in bed at first, 
but might cause your death if persisted in. Before 



OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. II 

we go any further let us read something of its 

ORIGIN AND HISTORY. 

Webster defines tobacco as a plant, a native of 
America, the prepared leaves of which are much 
used for smoking and chewing, and in snuff. The 
name he derives from tabaco, the Indian name for 
the tobacco tubes or pipes, though others have 
derived it from Tabaco, a province in Yucatan, or 
Tobago, one of the Caribbees. Tobacco was first 
taken into Spain from St. Domingo by Hernandez 
de Toledo in 1559. By him some of the plants were 
presented to Jean Nicot. ambassador from Francis 
II. to the court of Portugal. Nicot presented 
some of the seeds and plants to Queen Catharine 
de Medicis, who gave it the name of herbe de la 
reine, or queen's herb. With scientific men, how- 
ever, it has ever retained the name of nicotiana, 
from the name of the ambassador himself. Whether 
Europeans would have invented the practice of 
smoking tobacco, if they had discovered it in its 
natural state, is a question, but they soon learned 
to imitate the Indian habit. As to its early use in 
any land, we have the following anecdote of Sir 
Walter Raleigh. This knight was a great favorite 
of Queen Elizabeth, and by her permission took 
possession of several large tracts of land in Amer- 
ica. He gave the name of Virginia to one part of 
this land, in honor of the Virgin Queen ; but 
whether at this time he saw the natives smoking 



1 2 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER ' 

tobacco in clay pipes and imported the habit to 
England, or whether one Ralph Lane, who returned 
with Sir Francis Drake, introduced it to English- 
men, there has been a great deal of controversy 
among literary men ; but it is admitted that if Sir 
Walter Raleigh was not the introducer of tobacco 
into England, he was certainly one of its greatest 
patrons and a most inveterate smoker. There is 
in the town of Islington, in North England, a pub- 
lic house called the Pied Bull, in which this noted 
knight once lived. Here the story is told that 
while he was quietly smoking in his room, a servant, 
entering, saw his master surrounded with clouds of 
smoke. Ignorant of the cause and terribly alarmed 
at seeing, as he supposed, the gentleman on fire, 
he rushed from the room, and soon returned with 
buckets of water, with which he completely drenched 
the distinguished smoker. 

This smoking soon spread over the entire Eastern 
Hemisphere, but, in spite of the general popularity, 
the habit met with bitter opposition from many in 
high authority. At Moscow a tribunal was instituted 
in 1634, called the Chamber of Tobacco, which pro- 
hibited the use of the herb, on penalty of the knout 
for the first offence, and death for the second. In 
Turkey, the despot Murat IV. ordered persons 
found smoking to be led through the streets of 
Constantinople with a pipe stuck through their nose 
or the first offence ; the second was punished by 



OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 1 3 

beheading. At Appenzil, in Switzerland, in 1653, 
smokers were summoned before council and pun- 
ished by fine or imprisonment. In England, James 
I. imposed a duty of seven shillings ($1.75) per 
pound on tobacco, in hopes that this would check 
its importation. King James did more. He issued 
a pamphlet of his own writing, entitled " Counter- 
blast to Tobacco," from which is extracted the 
following : " Tobacco is the lively image and pat- 
tern of Hell, for it hath allusion in it to all the vices 
of the world whereby Hell may be gained. First, 
it is a smoke ; so are all the vanities of the world. 
Secondly, it delighteth them who take it ; so do all 
the pleasures of the world. Thirdly, it maketh 
men drunken and light in the head ; so do all the 
vanities of the world. Fourthly, he that taketh to 
tobacco cannot leave it. It doth bewitch him. 
Even so the pleasures of the world make men loth 
to leave them, for they are, for the most part, en- 
chanted with them. It is a custom loathsome to 
the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, 
dangerous to the lungs, and in the black, stinking 
fumes thereof most resembling the horrible smoke 
of the bottomless pit.'- Thus wrote King James. 



14 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER: 




In 162 1 a ship anchored on the American shore, 
which had on board sixty girls. Those girls were 
sold for something over a hundred pounds of to- 
bacco each ; so, you see tobacco was the price of 
our first slaves, and those slaves were young, inno- 
cent girls. To-day men become slaves to that 
same tobacco, and find the master such a tyrant it 
is difficult to break the chains and be free. 



OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 



*5 




George Washington, the father of our country 
and the man who never told a lie, was also a hater 
of tobacco, and though brought up where it was 
raised and almost universally used, he never smoked 
or chewed. He was also a temperance man, and 
his name was given to the national movement for 
total abstinence in this country. 

George was born on the 2 2d of February, 1732, 
in the county of Westmoreland in the parish of 
Washington (so called from the family whose seat 
it had been for three generations). The house 



1 6 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER ) 

in which he was born was destroyed before the 
American Revolution. Among his manuscripts still 
in existence there is one, written under thirteen 
years of age, which deserves to be mentioned. It 
is entitled " Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior 
in Company and Conversation. " These rules are 
written out in the form of maxims to the number of 
one hundred and ten. "They form," says a writer 
who has some specimens of them, " a minute code 
of regulations for building up the habits of morals 
and manners and good conduct in young persons. " 
Whether they were taken in a body from some 
manual of education, or compiled by Washington 
himself from various books or from his own youth- 
ful observation and reflection, is unknown. The first 
is perhaps the more probable supposition. Some 
of these rules, which formed a part of .his youthful 
manners and morals, had their influence over 
Washington, and gave a complexion to his habits 
through life. 

When the Puritans came to Boston in 1630, it 
was under the following instructions : " We espe- 
cially desire to take care that no tobacco is planted 
by any of the planters under your government, 
unless it be some small quantity for mere necessity 
and for physic, and that the same be taken pri- 
vately by ancient men and none others, and to 
make a general restraint thereof as much as in you 



OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. I^ 

The Tobacco Plant 

reaches a height of several feet, and has large, 
spreading pale green leaves, which when full grown 
are gathered into sheds or dry-houses, stripped and 
sorted for the manufacture of cigars and plug 
tobacco, against the use of which I am endeavor- 
ing to warn you by writing in this little book cold 
facts and solid truths that cannot be denied by any 
intelligent person who is posted. 

A chemical examination of the tobacco leaf finds 
its surface dotted with small glands which contain 
the poisonous oil, nicotine. This is absorbed into 
the system by chewing and smoking. This oil is 
decided by our most noted chemists to be one of 
the subtlest poisons known, and is equal in strength 
to the strongest prussic acid. W. A. Axon asserts, 
in the Popular Science Monthly, that the nicotine 
in one cigar, if extracted and taken in a pure state, 
would kill two men. 



1 8 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 




The Indians Used to Poison 

their arrows, we are told, by dipping them into 
nicotine, convulsions, and often death, being the re- 
sult of these arrow wounds. It is said that Brodie, 
Queen Victoria's physician, made several experi- 
ments with nicotine, applying it to the tongues of 
a mouse, a squirrel, and a dog, death being pro- 
duced in every instance. A frog, placed in a re- 
ceiver containing a drop of nicotine in a little 
water, will die in a few hours. Put on a cat's 
tongue one drop of nicotine, and, in spite of its 
seven lives, it writhes in convulsions and dies. One 
has to learn to like tobacco. Boys who try it 
know that at first it gives them headache, dizzi- 
ness, and sickness at the stomach; their poor 
bodies try to tell them they are taking a rank 
poison. If they continue, the nicotine deadens 
their nerves so they do not feel the poisonous 
effects as at first, though they are more or less in- 
jured all the time. 



OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 



J 9 



For an Example 
let suppose an experiment. Take a boy ten years 
old, one who has never used tobacco. Allow him 




to take a piece of tobacco as large as a pea, chew 
it, not swallowing a drop, spitting every drop into 
a spittoon, but keep on chewing, not stop, but 
chew steadily. Before that £oy has done with that 
piece of tobacco as large as a pea, simply squeez- 
ing out the juice without swallowing a drop, he will 
lie on the floor in a cold, deathlike perspiration. 
He vomits the contents of his stomach. Place 
your finger upon his wrist ; he has no pulse, and so 
it will seem for a long time as if he were dying, or, 
perchance, dead. Steep a small piece of tobacco 
in a quart of water, and bathe the neck of a calf 
that may be troubled with vermin. You will kill 
the vermin, and if you are not careful, you will kill 



20 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER ; 

the calf too. Many calves have been killed by 
tobacco. Some of these calves had less than four 
legs. 

For Another Example, 

take a girl sixteen years of age, one with refined 
habits and gentle manners. Allow that she was to 
acquire the habit of using tobacco, smoking ciga- 
rettes, cigars, and going about with a chew of 
tobacco in her mouth. Now, boys, be candid. 
What effect do you think this habit would have on 
this young lady ? Do you think she would retain 
those refined habits and gentle manners? I think 
you will all agree with me that she would not. 
Now, can you tell me why this same habit would 
not have the same effect on the manners and habits 
of boys and young men ? Saying nothing of the 
damage it does otherwise, I think you cannot, for 
there is no reason why it would not. Now, what 
young man could ever think of choosing a young 
lady with such a habit as we have just mentioned 
with the intention of making her his wife, to be 
the mother of his offspring? I feel quite sure 
there is not one. Now, on the other hand, what 
refined young lady, providing she was aware of the 
injury and effects of the tobacco habit, would care 
to have for a lover a young man whose clothes and 
breath smell of the poison drug? If the truth 
were known, there would not be one. It is only 



OR, TOBACCO IX A NUTSHELL. 2 1 

because the fashion and habit are fixed upon men 
that makes it seem absurd and worse for women 
to acquire the habit. 

Cigarettes. 

Many boys and young men learn to smoke by 
beginning with cigarettes. These seem harmless, 
because they are so small, but they are supposed 
to be one of the worst preparations of tobacco. 
The smoke of the paper wrappings is irritating to 
the lungs, and the cigarettes send more poisonous 
fumes into the delicate air-cells than a pipe or 
cigar. Dr. Hammond bears witness to the ill 
effects of cigarettes in the production of facial 
neuralgia, insomnia, nervous dyspepsia, sciatica, 
and indisposition to mental exertion. In a city 
school a young lad of thirteen became dull and fit- 
ful and troubled with nervous twitching. His con- 
dition at length compelled him to be withdrawn 
from his studies. He was found to be a smoker of 
cigarettes. When asked why he did not give them 
up, he replied with tears that he had often tried to 
do so, but could not. The following is from a 
public schqpl journal : " Park H. Adams, aged 
fourteen, a student in the University of Tennessee, 
is dying. He smoked forty cigarettes on a wager, 
and inhaled the smoke." A young man showed 
some symptoms of heart disease. The pulse at 
times almost ceased, and at another time he seemed 



2 2 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 

on the point of dying. On consulting a physician, 
he was informed that all these symptoms came from 
smoking cigarettes, and on quitting them his health 
was soon regained. 

Now, boys who are smoking cigarettes, do you 
know the fascinating as well as dangerous habit 
upon you will grow ? 

The Deadly Cigarette. 

The following despatches to the daily papers of 
a single date tell their own story : 

Carlisle, Pa., Feb. n. — Edward D. Crall, busi- 
ness manager of the Morning Call at Harrisburg, 
died last evening at his father's house, South Pitts 
St., of blood poisoning, caused by excessive smok- 
ing of cigarettes. He was in his twenty-third 
year. 

Middletown, N. Y., Feb. n. — Johnnie Powers, 
eleven years old, was taken to the County Asylum 
at Orange Farm to-day, a raving maniac, from the 
effects of cigarette smoking. Symptoms of mania 
first developed Saturday, and were of a spasmodic 
nature. Soon the boy became very violent, strik- 
ing at people, tearing his clothes, and- trying to in- 
jure himself. The doctors think the case hopeless. 

Rev. C. M. Southgate, in "A Plain Talk with 
Boys," says : " Tobacco is murdering many a lad. 
Where they do not fairly kill, cigarettes are the 
devil's kindling wood. They start a craving for 



OR, TOBACCO IX A NUTSHELL, 23 

stimulants that liquor is quickest to meet. And 
why is it that ' fancy ' pictures go with them as 
prizes, unless licentiousness comes next ? But can't 
a man smoke and be good, be a Christian? I sup- 
pose so. But by the time tobacco has killed a few 
more generals like Grant, and a few more emper- 
ors like Frederick the Noble, and a few more busi- 
ness men and bright boys, a smart boy may get it 
through his head that it doesn't pay. And not till 
the smart boys quit will the poor and dull let it 
alone. The highest style of man does not smoke, 
will not submit to its slavery, nor be responsible 
for its example." 

Dr. B. W. Richardson has reported a case of a 
literary man who practically died of acute nicotine 
poisoning, resulting from smoking forty cigarettes 
and fourteen cigars in less than twelve hours. He 
died of muscular paralysis, with cold sweat, uncon- 
sciousness, and embarrassed breathing. Such cases 
are far less common than deaths by excessive, re- 
peated liquor drinking. But such deaths, whether 
from alcohol or tobacco, prove that these poisons 
are far more dangerous than is commonly sup- 
posed. 

I would say much more and produce much more 
valuable testimony against the use of cigarettes, 
but think what has already been said is enough to 
convince any sound-minded person, whether old 
or young, that cigarette smoking is a very unde- 



24 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER ; 

sirable pastime, taking into consideration the ill 
effects that many times follow their use. 

Drinking Men are almost always Smokers 

or chewers, and many a drunkard owes his ruined 
life and happiness to the appetite for narcotics, 
formed by the use of tobacco, and the company 
into which it led him. In Auburn, N.Y., a few 
years ago there were six hundred young men con- 
fined for crimes committed when they were under 
the influence of liquor. Five hundred testified 
they began their intemperance by the use of to- 
bacco. It is said that liquor is used in the manufac- 
ture of tobacco. If this is so, which I have no 
cause to doubt, it stands to reason that by using 
tobacco it creates a desire for strong drink. 

Physicians agree that many and serious troubles 
result from its use even by adults. It is certain 
that boys cannot indulge in it with safety. An 
eminent physician, dean of one of the leading 
medical colleges in this country, Dr. H. B. Palmer, 
of the University of Michigan, says that young men 
who learn to chew or smoke tobacco destroy, on an 
average, by so doing, one fifth of the enjoyment and 
value, and at least one tenth of the length of their 
lives. As in the case of alcohol, a little makes them 
long for more. The boy who begins with one or 
two cigars a day soon increases the number. 

Many men who are slaves to this poison would 



OR, TOBACCO IX A NUTSHELL. 25 

gladly be free from it, and very few tobacco users 
would advise their- sons to adopt the expensive, 
uncleanly, and worse than useless habit. 

Beside many evils which its use involves, not the 
least is one already noted as to alcohol. It not 
only becomes a habit that is hard to abandon, but 
the very failure which so many make in their efforts 
to quit its use shows too plainly that it undermines 
the power of self-control, and so is a weakening of 
that vigor of trained will, of that mastery of self 
which is a part of the physical as well as of the 
intellectual welfare and power of manhood. 

As an interest both of individual and State the 
use of tobacco in any form by children should be 
prohibited under proper penalties. 

As a matter of public and personal health, and in 
the interests of the vigor of coming generations, 
this restraint is demanded. 

During the growing period of life all are more 
susceptible to the evil effects of tobacco. Those 
of full age are affected in a milder degree. There 
is always a steady tendency of the habit to increase. 
Young man, it is not only the injury you are doing 
to yourself by smoking cigarettes and using to- i 
bacco in general, but you are preparing to transmit j 
the injury to your children. The transmission of 
habits and disease by parents to children is a well- 
known fact among the wise. 

Now, boys, if you are smoking with the thought 



26 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 

of its making a gentleman of you, you will get sadly 
mistaken, I can tell you, as the tendency is quite 
in the opposite direction. The habit and its effects 
have changed many a gentleman, as well as gentle 
boys, from happy and virtuous lives to degraded 
and ruined ones. 

Even among those who have the belief that the 
moderate use of tobacco does not injure all per- 
sons, there is such agreement as to its effects upon 
the young that most of them favor laws which 
make it a punishable offence for those under age 
to use tobacco in any form. 




Extracts from Recent Legislation. 

STATE OF MINNESOTA. 

*' Section i. — That all school officers in the 
State may introduce, as part of the daily exercises 
of each school in their jurisdiction, instruction in 



OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 27 

the elements of moral science, including self- 
denial, health, purity, temperance, cleanliness." 

STATE OF NEW YORK. 

" Provision shall be made by the proper school 
authorities for instructing all pupils in all schools 
supported by public money, or under State control, 
in physiology and hygiene, with special reference 
to the effects of alcoholic drinks, stimulants, and 
narcotics upon the human system/' 

STATE OF MICHIGAN. 

u Section 15. — The district board shall specify 
the studies to be pursued in the schools of the 
district ; that provision shall be made for instruct- 
ing all pupils in every school in physiology and 
hygiene, with special reference to the effects of 
alcoholic drinks, stimulants, and narcotics gener- 
ally upon the human system." 

Tobacco and Self-interest. 

Professor Bascom says : 

" There are few prevalent and accepted habits 
more at war with a wise self-interest than that of 
the use of tobacco. 

" The very positive and unwholesome effects of 
tobacco on the human system are obvious, aside 
from all medical testimony on the subject, fronv 
the simple fact that it creates an intense, almost 
ungovernable appetite, as in the use of opium and 



28 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 

liquor, and forms a decisive change in the tissues 
of the body. 

" It is not a normal condition, but a very abnor- 
mal condition, from which this craving springs. 
It discloses the unfortunate change which has been 
wrought in the physical system by tobacco, a 
change of which every chewer and smoker has a 
most humiliating witness within himself. He need 
not go elsewhere to know the very positive power 
of tobacco. The devils of weakness and disease 
which possess humanity are legion, and a goodly 
number find entrance by this appetite. Other 
better and more enjoyable pleasures are sacrificed 
to this habit. All pleasures are not open to us. 
We must choose among them. He who chooses 
tobacco as his after-dinner indulgence leaves be- 
hind him the more delicate appreciation of food, 
and the more varied and wholesome gratification 
of fruits which belong to a perfectly healthy appe- 
tite. It is an unsocial habit. In a limited way, in 
the form of smoking, it is social, but even then it 
is narrowly elective to those of like habits, and 
comes in to reduce the mental tone and straiten 
the circle. 

" The indulgence more or less repels many, and 
the persons repelled are those of a more refined 
and inspiring temper. The habit is exclusive and 
narrow in its social and in its physical relations. 

" A man of good judgment having reached ma- 



OR, TOBACCO IX A NUTSHELL. 29 

ture years very rarely takes it up. It is fastened 
on boys and young men in that period of crude- 
ness and greenness in which they are mistaking 
the vices of their elders for their virtues, their 
errors for their excellences. A boy once gotten 
beyond this unripe age, so succulent of moral 
malaria, without the habit, finds nothing in it to 
appeal to his growing judgment and experience." 

The tobacco habit and its effect on school work, 
as written by a prominent teacher of ten years' ex- 
perience in one of our State Normal Schools : 

" i. Boys that begin the habit at an early age 
are stunted physically, and never arrive at full 
bodily development. 

" 2. Accompanied with the use of the narcotic 
were certain disordered physical functions, such as 
indigestion, impaired taste, defective eyesight, dull 
hearing, nervous affections, and diseases of the 
heart. I have not found a single case of one early 
addicted to tobacco using who did not suffer with 
one or more of these direful, unnatural conditions. 

" 3. Tobacco in any form destroys the ability to 
apply one's self to study, and prevents his com- 
prehending or remembering his lessons. The facul- 
ties of a boy under the influence of tobacco seem 
to be in a stupor. 

u 4. In one case where reform was secured and 
the habit overcome, the pupil returned to normal 
progress, and had a successful career as a student." 



30 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 




A Schoolmaster Lecturing his Scholars upon the Evils of Tobacco. 



OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 3 1 

A Schoolmaster Lecturing his Scholars upon the 
Evils of Tobacco. 

" Scholars : I wish to state two things in rela- 
tion to the bad effect of tobacco on schools. J 
have taught forty- six years, and I have observed 
that boys who are in the habit of using tobacco 
are generally unequal in their lessons. Tobacco 
exasperates their nerves, and they cannot study 
with uniformity and composure ; hence their les- 
sons are not alike good ; and secondly, scholars 
who use tobacco are more difficult to govern. 

"Tobacco exasperates their tempers, and they 
cannot keep orderly and still on their seats. Some 
of the noblest boys I ever had have been ruined 
by this abominable thing. It injures both scholar- 
ship and government." 



THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER j 



J^ 







Phineas Taylor Barnum 

was born at Bethel, Conn., July 5, 18 10. He de- 
tested tobacco as much as he did strong drink. At 
the age of nineteen he became editor of the Herald 



OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 33 

of Freedom, published in Danbury, Conn. He 
afterwards became the most successful showman 
ever known. Almost every one has seen Barnum's 
Greatest Show on Earth. 

Address of P. T. Bamum, Esq., to the Boys. 

" But little need be said to convince boys of the 
deleterious nature of tobacco. It is a species of 
poison that cannot be mistaken for any palatable 
and delicious ingredient. Many boys have doubt- 
less heard the story of a bear that once chanced 
to come across a field of tobacco. He only saw 
the pale flowers, and smelt their nauseous perfume, 
but he turned up his nose and cantered away. 

"The boy who loves tobacco will, ten chances to 
one, make a tippler. He cannot indulge a taste so 
unnatural without being led into other unnatural 
habits. He only wants the peculiar coat, cravat, 
gait, and air of a dandy to make him a smoker. 
He only requires the uncompromising expression 
of a dandy to make him a commentary upon the 
use of this nauseous weed, which God designed 
for the poorest worm in all the wide creation. 

" My boys, do not let the example of the poorest 
worms of humanity lead you into such temptation. 
It can never give you satisfaction ; for, the more 
you smoke, chew, or snuff, the more you will wish 
to, and, like the poor inebriate, you will at last 
become an outcast in the fold of Truth. 



34 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 

"Let me entreat you to be careful how you venture 
upon the forbidden ground where tobacco finds its 
growth. You will find it a place of magnetic in- 
fluence, and, when you would turn to come away, 
your feet will be stayed. 

"You will find it a place of human misery, where 
thousands lie, unable to break the shackles that 
bind them. You will find it a place of human dis- 
appointment where many leave for death.' ' 



OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 35 




A Little Boy Speaking a Piece to his Mother about 
Tobacco. 

You'd scarce expect one of my age 

To slay tobacco on this stage \ 

But should I chance to fall below 

Great men, in hurling wrath upon this foe, 

Don't cast on me malignant eye, 

Nor let your angry passions fly. 

Large streams from little quids do flow, 
Small chewers into great ones grow ; 
And though I now am small and young, 
No quid shall ever touch my tongue. 



36 



THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 



Let all the boys and girls like me, 
From filthy quids pledge they'll be free ; 
And then will not Columbia's soil 
Be rich, without the new found " oil" ? 







Now, fellow schoolmates and playmates, you all 
know I have smoked cigarettes, chewed a little to- 
bacco when we would all meet on the park in the 
evening, and once or twice have drunk some beer. 
Now I hold in this glass, not beer or any kind of 
liquor that will hinder my growth and spoil my 



OR, TOBACCO IX A NUTSHELL. 37 

brain ; instead of that, it is pure, cold water, which 
will quench my thirst and make me healthy ; and, 
boys, I have adopted it for my life drink. 

As for cigarettes and tobacco, I have given them 
up forever, and I am feeling like a new boy, and, 
boys, you had better follow my example, and when 
we grow up we can make our parents happy, as well 
as being healthy and happy ourselves. 



38 



THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 




Fig. I. Fig. 2. 

Figure i represents a young man at the age of 
seventeen, who had never used tobacco or strong 



OR,- TOBACCO IX A NUTSHELL. 39 

drink, or indulged in any vice. Figure 2 represents 
the same one seven years later, after indulging in 
tobacco, liquor, and vice to excess. 

In an experimental observation of thirty-eight 
boys of all classes of society, and of average health, 
who had been using tobacco for periods ranging 
from two months to two years, twenty- seven showed 
severe injury to the constitution and insufficient 
growth ; thirty-two showed irregularity of the heart's 
action, disordered stomachs, cough, and a craving 
for alcohol ; thirteen had intermittence of the pulse, 
and one had consumption. After they had given 
up the use of tobacco, within six months one half 
were free from all their former symptoms, and the 
remainder had recovered by the end of the year. 

When Europeans first visited New Zealand they 
found in the native Maoris the most finely de- 
veloped and powerful men of any of the tribes 
inhabiting the islands of the Pacific. Since the 
introduction of tobacco, for which the Maoris de- 
veloped a passionate liking, they have, from this 
cause alone, it is said, become decimated in num- 
bers, and at the same time reduced in stature and 
in physical well-being, so as to be an altogether 
inferior type of men. 

The following paragraphs are taken from Smith's 
"Physiology" : 

" It is evident that the effects of tobacco on the 
young are especially evil. 



40 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER j 

" Boys who use it are weakened in their minds 
and bodies. They are so changing the system from 
its natural healthy condition, that it is preparing 
for disease and acquiring tendencies that lead to 
dissipation and worthlessness. 

" Whatever satisfaction it may give is purchased 
at the expense of slavery to it. In some occupa- 
tions it is a serious hindrance to success. The bad 
v effects of tobacco smoke are increased when it is 
drawn with the breath into the lungs. More of its 
poisonous ingredients pass through the air cells and 
reach the blood. 

" Its effects in checking growth are unmistakable, 
so far as the young are concerned. It is doing 
more harm to bodily health than alcohol. A sub- 
stance that will produce such profound impression 
as it does when first used, and which has caused 
death when applied for a long time to a raw sur- 
face on the body, and which has by its irritation 
induced cancer, surely ought not to be in ordinary 
use among mankind.'' 

Physiological Action. 

The physiological effects of tobacco on man 
have been very minutely observed by Dr. Pierre, 
and are thus described : 

In small doses tobacco causes a sensation of heat 
in the throat. In large doses it causes nausea, 
vomiting, and purging, and a most distressing sen- 
sation or sinking at the pit of the stomach. 



OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 4 1 

Its most remarkable effects are languor, feeble- 
ness, relaxation of the muscles, trembling, great 
anxiety and tendency to faint, vision enfeebled, 
pulse small and weak, surface cold and clammy, 
convulsive movements followed by paralysis and 
death. The law of local affinity, by which any 
substance taken into the system exerts a special 
effect upon particular organs, is a well established 
fact. Thus, white lead fastens upon the muscles of 
the wrist and produces what is known among white 
lead manufacturers and painters as wrist drop. 

Mercury affects the salivary glands, and iodine 
the lymphatics. The local affinity of the oil of 
tobacco is for the nerves of the heart, weakening 
the organ and producing palpitation, and rendering 
it incapable of sending a full supply of arterial 
blood to the brain, causing giddiness. The con- 
tinued and excessive use of tobacco is not seldom 
the chief cause of those organic derangements 
ending in fatal heart disease. 

Such are the primary effects of tobacco as noted 
by many intelligent physicians. 

Why, then, it is asked, do many persons use it 
for years and suffer no injury? That it is some- 
times used for years without producing the extreme 
symptoms noted, is true. That it does no harm is 
far from the truth. That by constant use the sys- 
tem tolerates a substance that, if carried to excess, 
in the first instance produces death, is a part of the 



42 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER ; 

vital problem that the science of human life pre- 
sents for our solution. It is true of other sub- 
stances as well as tobacco. Arsenic, after long 
use, is eaten in large quantities with seeming im- 
punity. A quantity of opium which as a first dose 
would produce stupor and death, would have no 
marked effect upon a habitual opium-eater. But it 
may be fairly set down as a certainty that any agent 
which antagonizes animal life cannot be taken per- 
sistently, without great functional disturbance, the 
tendency of which is to weaken and enfeeble the 
entire organism. 

Mr. Scolley, surgeon of St. Thomas Hospital, in an 
able lecture on paralysis, says : " I am not going to 
give you a sermon against smoking, but I am going 
to point out to you all the various and positive 
causes of paralysis, and smoking is one of them. I 
know of no single vice which does so much harm 
as smoking. It is a snare and a delusion. It 
soothes the excitement of the nervous system at 
the time, to render it more irritable and more feeble 
ultimately." 

Mr. Higginbottom, an eminent surgeon in Not- 
tingham, England, writes in the London Lancet : 
" After fifty years of most extensive practice of my 
profession, I have come to the decision that smok- 
ing is a main cause of ruining our young men. 
The proverbial drunkenness of our countrymen 
can only be arrested by laying the axe at the root 



OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 43 

of its super- inducing cause, the thirst-creating power 
of tobacco." 

Dr. J. Pidduck, with extensive opportunities for 
observation, noted the remarkable fact that leeches 
were killed instantly by the blood of smokers, and 
dropped dead as soon as applied. 

The victim of this habit will say these effects 
follow only the excessive, not the moderate, use of 
the weed. A sufficient answer to this is found in 
the well-known fact that the law of narcotics and 
stimulants is that of increase, and the boundary 
line between moderation and excess is too shadowy 
and ill-defined to be observed by the slave of a 
debasing habit. 

What a blessing to the race if all men shrank 
from this plague of the brain as did the first Na- 
poleon. One inhalation was enough. In disgust 
he exclaimed, " O, the swine ! The stomach turns. 
It is a habit only fit to amuse sluggards.". 

Abraham Lincoln hated tobacco. General Grant 
tolerated the cigar. What was the consequence ? 
It killed him. When people study into matters 
enough to know what tobacco does to them in the 
long run, and why they have these uncomfortable 
feelings when they try to leave off the habit and 
give nature a chance to clean out their systems, 
perhaps they will understand the causes of such 
derangement. 

Dr. Ferguson says : " I believe that no one who 



44 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER J 

smokes tobacco before the bodily powers are de- 
veloped ever makes a vigorous man. It not only 
injures the body, but the mind also." 

Dr. Prince, for a long time superintendent of 
the insane asylum at Northampton, Mass., says : 
" Fully half of the patients who have come to our 
asylum for treatment are the victims of tobacco. It 
is also the common stepping-stone to intoxicating 
beverages." 

Say No ! to tobacco, that poisonous weed, 

Say No ! to this poison which to intemperance will lead. 

Our standard medical works teach us that to- 
bacco affects first the brain ; second, the heart ; 
and third, the stomach. 

From the brain the whole nervous system is 
affected. Through the heart the entire circulation 
of the blood, and through the stomach the diges- 
tive and assimilative apparatus are influenced. 

Says Rev. Dr. Talmage : 

" There are multitudes of young men smoking 
themselves to death. Nervous, cadaverous, nar- 
row-chested, and fidgety, they are preparing for 
early departure, or a half-and-half existence that 
will be of little satisfaction to themselves or little 
use to others. Quit it, my young brother. Before 
you go through this life you will want stout nerves, 
a broad chest, and a brain unclouded with tobacco 
smoke." 



OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 45 

In reply to a letter from Dr. Cox, John Quincy 
Adams writes : 

" In my early youth I was addicted to tobacco 
in two of its mysteries, smoking and chewing. I 
was warned by a medical friend of the pernicious 
operation of this habit upon the stomach and the 
nerves, and the advice of the physician was fortified 
by my own experience. More than thirty years 
have passed away since I deliberately renounced 
the use of tobacco in all its forms, and, although I 
had a struggle with vitiated nature, I never yielded. 

11 1 have often wished that every individual 
afflicted with this artificial passion would prevail on 
himself to try the experiment which I made, sure 
that it would turn every acre of tobacco land into 
a wheat-field, and add five years to the average of 
human life." 

Professor Oliver, of the Annapolis Academy, says 
he can discover when a boy uses tobacco by his 
absolute inability to draw a clean straight line. Dr. 
Kitchen questions if tobacco is not doing more 
injury than alcohol, because it is so largely used 
by youth, it is less frowned down as not respectable, 
and its effect is more diffused and masked. 

What a Little Weed Did. 

A telegram from West Superior, Wis., Aug. 7; 
says : " A clerk in the clothing store of Abraham 
& Co., at West Superior, hid a half-smoked cigar 



4^ THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 

from one of his employers this evening in a pile of 
clothing. Loss, $40,000." 

All from a Cigarette. 

IT STARTS A $240,000 BLAZE IN THE NEW YORK 
Y. M. C. A. GROUNDS. 

New York, Aug. 20. — A discarded cigarette set 
fire to the grand stand in the athletic grounds of 
the Y. M. C. A. in One Hundred and Fiftieth St., 
between Walton Ave. and the Harlem river, late 
this afternoon, and started a blaze that resulted in 
$240,000 damage. 

The following is taken from one of the daily 
papers of July 27, 1891, written from Buzzard's 
Bay: 

" IS TOBACCO KILLING BOOTH ? 

" There is a well-authenticated report floating 
about this town that Edwin Booth is dying from 
the effects of too much smoking. He is such a 
slave to the weed that he cannot stop smoking, 
even though he knows it is killing him. Its effect 
upon his health is just as fatal, though not of the 
same character as that which shut out the life of 
General Grant. Joe Jefferson and Ex- President 
and Mrs. Cleveland have been striving to reform 
Mr. Booth in this respect, and for a while they 
partly succeeded, but the habit had too strong a 
hold upon him, and his indulgences became more 
unrestrained than ever. 



OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 47 

"It is because of this relapse, and because he 
knows he can get no better in health, that he has 
left here suddenly last Saturday. He has gone to 
Xarragansett Pier." 

Boys, I think you will fully agree with me that 
it is better not to make a tobacco box of yourself 
at all. I could produce many more testimonials 
against the use of tobacco from eminent physicians 
of long experience, but think the few which I have 
submitted for your consideration are sufficient to 
convince any boy of sound mind that he will have 
nothing to do with tobacco in any form. If older 
people will not set a good example for you in re- 
gard to using tobacco, just show them you know 
the habit is injurious, and that you have manhood 
enough about you not to become a victim to it, and 
I am sure you will never be sorry for your decision, 
but when you become a man you will congratulate 
yourself that you have abstained from the filthy 
weed which has such power to lessen every power 
which nature has given you. 



4 8 



THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 




Don't Drink, my Boys, nor Smoke. 
Boys, don't drink anything that will make you 
drunk. If you drink such things when you are 
boys, you will drink them when you come to be 
grown, and likely to be a drunkard all your life. 
We will tell you a story of a boy who got to drink- 
ing whiskey and smoking when he was quite young. 
His father kept whiskey in the house. Little John 
was given toddy, a drink made of whiskey, hot 
water, sugar, and spices, for his colics when a baby, 
for his colds and all his aches when he grew older. 
He became very fond of it, and soon could drink 
brandy or whiskey like a grown man. By the time 
he was ten years old he was a hard drinker and 
hard smoker, and almost all the time drunk. 



OR, TOBACCO IX A NUTSHELL. 49 

One afternoon he was very much intoxicated. 
He abused his mother, who tried to keep him from 
going to the river to bathe, and left home cursing 
her. He went to a cherry orchard with some boys 
as bad as himself; ate all the cherries he could, 
and then went to the river with them to bathe. 
They took a bottle of whiskey, and cigars with 
them. They were all quite drunk. Johnny was 
very loud, swearing and blustering. He dared the 
other boys to swim over the river with him. They 
made as if they would, but stopped, and he went 
on and sank in the middle of the stream to rise 
no more. 

Alarm was given, and for two days the river was 
searched for his body, but all in vain ; it could not 
be found. Cannon were fired, the river was raked, 
and all was done that could be in pity for his 
broken-hearted mother and father. Still he could 
not be found, and the search was given up. 

Three months afterward a fisherman found a 
skeleton in a drift ten miles below the city, which 
was found to be that of the unfortunate boy. 

This is but one case out of thousands. Boys, 
never touch liquor — no beer, no wine, no whiskey, 
no cigars, no tobacco ; they are all one family, and 
how can you marry one and not the whole ? 



50 



THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 




^^.^ 



The Little Anti-Tobacco Preacher Spreading 

his Tracts. 
Dear Boys : Did you ever think that you have 
a mission to perform as well as older people ? 

Do you see this little fellow talking to these three 
men that he found working by the roadside ? 



OR, TOBACCO IX A NUTSHELL. 5 1 

He had saved pennies which his friends had 
given him to buy what he chose, and with the 
money he bought some temperance and anti- 
tobacco tracts, and he finds a great deal of pleas- 
ure in handing them to men that he sees smoking. 
He hopes to induce them to leave off their bad 
habits. He addresses them in a modest, respect- 
ful way, and see how attentively they listen. You 
can do much good by your example. If you do 
right, many a man in the wrong track may be 
touched by your childish faith, and follow in your 
little footsteps. I -have often heard of little chil- 
dren pleading with their fathers to forsake their 
bad habits, and sometimes the voice of a child is 
just what is needed to awaken the attention of a 
parent. Be sure your own example is right, for a 
lad that has any bad habit cannot consistently urge 
others to desist from their vices. 

An exemplary, kind little boy will be well re- 
ceived, even by wicked men, for example has more 
force than words. 



5 2 



THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER j 







m^^\% 



AN INSURANCE AGENT'S DREAM. 



Musing in my office upon the many ills that 
afflict society, I fell asleep and dreamed. In my 
dream I was travelling in a country at a great dis- 
tance from any human habitation. The road passed 
along a serpentine valley, with mountains rising to 
a vast' height on all sides. As the heavens seemed 
to portend a storm, I looked anxiously around for 
some place of shelter for the night. Casting my 
eye to the left, I espied a large opening, and thither 
I bent my steps. 

Stepping into a winding cavity in the passage, I 
sat down. Looking through a crevice in the rock, 



OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 53 

I saw a multitude of strange beings advance and 
defile right and left. A terrible blast of a trumpet 
was given, which was answered from within, and then 
some one exclaimed aloud, "Have the Prince's 
vicegerents assembled?" "Puissant Prince of the 
power of the air, your ministers are in waiting," 
was the reply. A being of gigantic stature then 
advanced, and after him followed a numerous train. 
In a few minutes I dared to follow. After pro- 
ceeding some two or three hundred feet, I came to 
the pandemonium of their assembly. This was a 
large hall, having circular seats of rock rising one 
above the other. On the opposite side, in front, 
rose a huge black rock — the throne for the chief. 
From the sides of the cavern there issued a dark, 
blue flame, which made darkness visible. 

The fumes of brimstone were so strong that I 
fell upon my face close to the rocky floor, to pre- 
vent suffocation. 

The superior fiend rose from his seat, resting 
upon the rock a massy spear, which he held in his 
right hand. With his tail he lashed his scaly sides, 
which gave forth a terrific sound, and with fiery 
eyes he thus began, in tones that shook the cavern : 
"Thrones! Dominions! Powers! I have assem- 
bled you for consultation. I must devise some 
more efficient measures for arresting the progress 
of temperance. Thousands of my subjects have 
deserted. Many have so far recovered from the 



54 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 

effects of intemperance as to be savingly affected 
by the gospel of my great foe, Jesus Christ. They 
have joined churches, and are laboring to persuade 
others to do the same." 

As he said these words, the whole crew grasped 
their spears, and lashed their scaly sides with their 
tails. He continued: " Something must be done, 
or our cause will lose ground. Whether it be best 
to make more open war upon temperance, or prac- 
tise with greater vigilance our secret wiles, judge 
ye. For triumphant success I place great reliance 

UPON TOBACCO. 

" We will first hear from King Alcohol, and then 
I wish especially to hear from his prime minister, 
my valued friend, tobacco, who stands yonder in 
smoke." 

King Alcohol arose. His aspect wjs fierce and 
frightful ; his head large ; his hair clotted ; his eyes 
were like lightning. His nose was like the pro- 
boscis of an elephant, and coiled like the worm of 
a still ; and his bowels seemed transparent with the 
glowing fires of hell. In musing accent thus he 
spoke: "Your Majesty will bear witness that no 
power has done you more service than myself. To 
deceive and destroy is my business, and yet I have 
not been able to do your majesty as good service 
as formerly. Since our last meeting I have failed to 
invent any new species of alcoholic drink. But I 
have done better. I have set deacons and Christians 



OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 55 

to raising and selling tobacco. I have blinded 
the eyes of temperance folks to the fact that to- 
bacco and alcohol are twin devils, that united they 
stand, divided they fall. Some effort is being made 
to get up an anti-tobacco reform. I give way for 
the faithful powers of high satanic labor to speak 
their minds." 

Then brandy rising, with a bluff red cheek, said 
that he was steadily at his work of ruin, and suc- 
ceeded well. He ran like liquid fire through the 
whole system, but made permanent lodgement in 
the liver, producing tubercles, abscesses and scir- 
rhus. He advised unwearied labor in inducing men 
to raise and use tobacco. 

Gin, with a pale and haggard aspect, rising, said, 
that, taking hold of the fluids of the body, he 
rapidly carried them off through the kidneys, emaci- 
ated and destroyed its victims ; that he was steadily 
at work, and probably had more on the way to 
destruction than any other agent, unless it was his 
brother tobacco. Onward, is my advice. 

Whiskey, rising quickly, with a bloated appear- 
ance, said he hoped not to be outdone by any one 
in conclave. He scorched the stomach, bleared 
the eyes, and, burning his victims with inward fire, 
he was able very soon to bring them into a state of 
delirium tremens. My advice is, neve?- rest. With 
plenty of tobacco our cause is unconquerable. To- 
bacco will keep up an eternal thirst. 



56 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 

Rum, with a face purple-looking, lean, and 
blotched, rose and said that he took a powerful 
hold of the stomach, bowels, and brain, but must 
confess that he took increasing pleasure in the dis- 
eases and deaths produced by tobacco. My ad- 
vice is, hope for complete success. 

Beer, pot-bellied and bloated, rising, said that 
he grasped the liver and made fun of the hypochon- 
dria of his victims. He struck many down with 
apoplexy, is now encountering much opposition, 
but is still driving a good business of disease and 
death. I concur in the idea that tobacco is a 
mighty ally. Unwearied diligence, is my counsel. 
"A continual dropping will wear away a stone." 

Wine, with a cherry-looking face, and corpulent, 
rising, said that he rejoiced to say that he left no 
organ untouched ; that he inflicted an admirable 
degree of pain by gout and gravel ; that he moved 
among what is called the higher circles, was doing 
a good business, and daily sending many to the 
grave and hell. * Deceive, is my advice. 

Cider, with a sodden aspect and red nose, rising, 
said that he affected the stomach and liver, pro- 
duced jaundice, gall-stones, etc. ; that he still 
found fools enough to favor him, and that he was 
still able to make tobacco more and more popu- 
lar to do a great business ; that he depended very 
much upon the agency of tobacco ; that men, as 
the expression goes, " drank to wet their whistle, 
and smoked to dry it." 



OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 57 

The great chief then bowed his head, and ex- 
tending his hand toward his compeer tobacco, 
Tobacco arose. He was a being of great stature, 
and the most filthy of all the crew. On the top of 
his head rose a large tobacco plant, the leaves of 
which he moved by mere effort of his will. His 
skin was dry, and the color of a seared tobacco 
leaf. One cheek was distended by an enormous 
quid, the juice of which constantly oozing from 
his mouth, fell in drops upon his filthy breast. A 
jar of snuff was buckled to his side, and he kept 
one hand titillating his proboscis with its contents, 
while with the other he held a huge pipe, which he 
frequently put to his mouth, and from which issued 
a smoke like the smoke of the bottomless pit. He 
spoke with a grating, nasal twang : " May it please 
your Majesty, and you, ' most potent, grave, and 
reverend signiors,' I have long known that my labors 
were second to none in the cause, and your Majesty 
may rest assured, as long as I find favor among the 
posterity of Adam, the glorious cause of intemper- 
ance will go on. To all the powers that be I bid 
defiance to stay the onward, desolating progress of 
inebriety as long as my articles, pipes, cigars, and 
quids, are loved and used. , Some are astonished at 
the favor I receive. But it is so, and your Majesty 
is aware that I am hardly suspected of aiding the 
cause of intemperance. 

"A few only know me, though others are suspicious. 



58 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 

Many temperance lecturers are blind to my power, 
and I have them in my grasp. 

" Only a few churches and few clergymen have 
lifted a finger against me. Indeed, I am generally 
esteemed a friend, — am introduced into Christian 
society, — and while I am sowing broadcast the 
seeds of death, I am treated as a very companion- 
able fellow. 

" Surely it has not escaped your majesty that I 
have led more into the ragged, raving ranks of 
intemperance than any other. 

" Be it understood by this august council that no 
sooner does a man break fellowship with me, than 
his thirst for intoxicating drink diminishes and is 
pretty much gone. 

• " It is like cutting off the resources of a fountain. 
Our cause is safe as long as the friends of tem- 
perance tolerate me. 

" The use of my manufactures not only creates a 
thirst which tempts to the use of intoxicating 
liquor, but it weakens the, whole man, and creates 
a demand for intoxicants. I yield the palm to no 
power in the cause. Keep men ignorant of my 
nature, and angels may lecture on temperance with 
the winning grace of heaven, and I will laugh at 
their efforts forever. 

"May it please your Satanic Majesty and my 
worthy compeers, our cause is safe as long as we 
can keep temperance men silent in regard to me. 



OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 59 

I claim that I am twin devil with Alcohol, his 
equal. These things being so, they are sufficient 
to convince every power here assembled that 
smoking, chewing, and snuffing are like pillars of 
adamant to our noble cause. 

"Allow me, most noble peers, to state my amount 
of influence. My dominion is wide. No pope, 
no prince, no potentate wields such a sceptre ! I 
boast of subjects from sea to sea, and from the 
river to the ends of the earth. I count millions in 
China, and in Turkey, Persia, Germany, and other 
kingdoms. 

" Three hundred millions and more acknowledge 
my sway ! I am the idol-god of mighty rivers ; 
the Ganges, Danube, Mississippi, and Connecticut 
are all mine. I exhaust the fat valleys on their 
borders, and make them tributary to your majesty's 
glorious cause. (Here the cavern shook with ap- 
plause.) Venerable compeers ! you have been 
long in his Majesty's service against the hated race 
of man. I am comparatively young, for less than 
three centuries ago I began my work, and now I 
am well intrenched in the human race, emasculat- 
ing and demoralizing nations, and laying kings 
and presidents at my feet. 

" I annually raise four billion pounds of my poi- 
sonous plant ) I manufacture four hundred billion 
cigars ; I have nearly two million hands in the 
sunny South employed more or less in its cultivation. 



60 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 

Negroes do my work there, but white folks — 
deacons and pious men — do it on the banks of 
the Connecticut. I have thousands of manufac- 
tories of cigars, meerschaums, snuff, honey-dew, 
pigtail, and other brands of tobacco in America. 

" In Europe I do business on a broader scale. 
There I have more magnificent establishments, 
and keep redundant supplies for my legions of 
votaries. The human family expend one thou- 
sand millions of dollars and more in my service 
yearly. 

" I accomplish my work in a clandestine way — 
so much so as to elude the keenest observation. 
I effect sudden deaths ; I form cancers ; I eat out 
tongues ; I afflict with dyspepsia, palsy, insanity, 
and with diseases by the score, keeping my victims 
blind as the owl at noonday about my agency. I 
glory in hoodwinking doctors, clergymen, and well- 
nigh the whole posse of the Sons and Daughters of 
Temperance. I seal their lips by inducing the 
belief that I do no mischief. Noble peers, we 
devils have no subjects which please us so well as 
those who deny our agency and our existence. 

" Dupes ! my genius is to deceive. 

"Give me your aid, fellow-workers, in my loyal 
purpose, and I will poison the race from pole to pole, 
blot out the image of God, change the style of man 
and bring on a race so scraggy and deformed, so 
emasculated and dwarfed as to be beneath the 



OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 6 1 

contempt of noble devils, such as I now have the 
honor to address ! " 

Here Tobacco proudly took his seat amidst the 
boisterous acclamations of his fellow-demons. 

The superior fiend, once more rising in stately 
grandeur, pronounced a eulogy on his Prime Min- 
ister, Tobacco, and all pandemonium reverberated 
with the shouts of its principalities and powers. 

Inconsistent Temperance Advocates. 

The following is a story as related by the author 
of " Temperance Tales." It is of an accredited 
agent of a temperance society. He was one day 
soliciting contributions with tobacco in his mouth, 
when he was accosted by a gentleman : " You, sir, 
are not a proper person to be an agent in the cause 
of temperance, for you are not a temperance man 
yourself. You are enslaved to tobacco." No an- 
swer was made, but some one present afterwards 
told the rebuker that the lecturer was one of the 
best men in the country. He was surprised to 
hear this, and would have sent an apology had he 
known the agent's address. Some time after, 
meeting this same agent looking like a different 
man, he was beginning to apologize when he was 
interrupted : " No apology is needed. Your re- 
proof led to much reflection and to new resolu- 
tions. As the consequence, you behold me to-day 
a free man, and you are my deliverer." 



62 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 

John B. Gough, who became a temperance lec- 
turer while still a smoker, relates that on his way 
to an out-door meeting a friend offered him cigars. 
" No, thank you," he said, " I have nowhere to put 
them." " You can put half a dozen in your cap," 
was the reply. This he did, and so, ascending the 
platform, addressed two thousand children. To 
avoid taking cold he kept on his cap, forgetting 
what it contained. At the close he exclaimed : 
<( Now, boys, let us give three rousing cheers for 
temperance." Lifting his cap, he waved it vigor- 
ously, flinging the cigars right and left at his 
audience ! It is not strange that this occurrence 
set him thinking. At a later period, being a guest 
at an English house, he sought the river banks for 
a quiet smoke. Finding it difficult to light his 
cigar he got down on his knees by a rock, shelter- 
ing a match with his hat while he puffed. Sud- 
denly the thought flashed upon him that if peo- 
ple should see him they would conclude that he 
had sought this spot for private devotion. " And 
what am I doing ? " thought he. " What would the 
audience say who heard me last night?" The 
conviction of his inconsistency struck him so for- 
cibly that he exclaimed, " I'll have no more of it ! " 
and away into the river went both matches and 
cigar. 

" Why did you send me that pamphlet on smok- 
ing?" said a minister to a friend. "Because I 



OR, TOBACCO IN A N'UTSHELL. 63 

thought you needed it." "Who told you that I 
smoked?" " You told me as you go about." " I 
will confess that I know it is wrong, and that I once 
gave it up ; but, fool as I am, I took to it again, 
and I have been in bondage ever since." 

Claflin and the Young Man. 

The following story is told about Horace B. 
Claflin, a prominent merchant, who is quaint and 
humorous as he is keen-witted and rich : 

On the 1 5 th of February, about five o'clock, Claflin 
was sitting alone in his office when a young man, 
pale and careworn, timidly knocked and entered. 

" Mr. Claflin," said he, •* I am in need of help. 
I have been unable to meet certain payments, be- 
cause certain parties have not done as they agreed 
by me, and would like to have $10,000. I come 
to you because you were a friend to my father, and 
might be a friend to me." 

"Come in," said Claflin, "come in and have a 
glass of wine." "No," said the young man, " I 
don't drink." "Have a cigar then." "No, I 
never smoke." "Well," said the joker, "I would 
like to accommodate you, but I don't think I can." 

"Very well," said the young man as he was 
about to leave the room. " I thought perhaps 
you might. Good day, sir." " Hold on," said 
Mr. Claflin. " You don't drink ? " " No." " Nor 
smoke?" " No." " Nor gamble, nor anything of 
the kind?" 



64 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 

" No, sir ; I am superintendent of the 

Sunday school." " Well," said Claflin, with tears 
in his voice and his eyes, too, "you shall have it 
.and three times the amount if you wish. Your 
father let me have $5,000 once, and asked me the 
same questions. He trusted me, and I will trust 
you." 

The Preacher and I. 

I met the parson in the fields, 

All in the twilight gray ; 
And what do you think, and what do you think 

The parson had to say ? 
It must be owned, he talked to me 

In quite a candid way : — 

" My friend," he said, " it grieves me much 

To know you drink and swear ; 
Such sinful, vile, seductive ways 

I pray you, sir, beware ! 
Dash to the earth the tempting bowl, 

And change your oaths to prayer." 

I looked the parson in the face, 

All in the twilight dim ; 
And what do you think, and what do you think 

/ had to say to him ? — 
It must be owned, I answered back 

With something of a vim : — 



OR, TOBACCO IX A NUTSHELL. 65 

u Parson," I said, "it grieves me much 

To know you smoke and chew ; 
Such sinful, vile, seductive ways 

I pray you, sir, eschew ! 
And, since I'm giving 'tit for tat/ 

I'll tell you what I'll do : — 

" Drop your Havana from your lips, 

I'll dash the bowl from mine ; 
Give up your quid, and — here's my oath — 

My swearing I'll resign." 
He went his way — a sadder man, 

But wiser, I opine. 



66 



THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 




The Wife Pleading in Behalf of her Sons. 
Some years ago, in the town of N., Billy Morse 
wooed and won the hand of an upright, noble girl. 
Their home was one of comfort and neatness. In 
a few years God blessed them with a happy family 
of little children. As the years advanced, his good 
wife was impressed with the idea that her little boys 
would copy their father's example ; and wisely she 
thought. Are there habits in their father's or 
mother's life which I should not wish my children 
to form ? The father was a great smoker, and in 
time little Billie began . to try to smoke, and the 
mother, knowing how much money his father had 



OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 67 

wasted, resolved to try to break the father's bad 
habit. She kindly plead with him, for his dear 
boy's sake, to relinquish the habit. After a great 
deal of thought he resolved to try to give up the 
use of tobacco. After days of pain, and sometimes 
great struggles, he came off conqueror. The result 
of his resolution was that in a year he had saved 
over a hundred dollars, and in five years he owned 
a tasteful little home, and had gained in strength 
and health. 

Now, my lads, if Mr. Morse had never formed 
this habit, think how many hours of suffering he 
might have saved. More than this, boys, you need 
not do wrong because your parents do. Be manly, 
do right, whatever bad examples your parents may 
set. When you are men you will have formed your 
own opinions and rely on them. Therefore learn 
while young to stand alone, and stand firmly what- 
ever opposition you may meet. 

A Slave. 

A man is a slave until he has learned to do without. 
I read lately of an American who had come to the 
conclusion that chewing tobacco was a filthy habit, 
and that he would give it up. For a long time he 
tried hard to do so, but in vain. He chewed many 
things as substitutes, but the old craving remained. 
At last, one day, he took out of his pocket a little 
plug of tobacco, and, holding it up, said: "You 



68 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 

are a thing and I am a man, and it shall no longer 
be said that a man is mastered by a thing; so, 
though I love you, here goes," and he threw it 
away, and never again chewed tobacco. That man 
had learned the part of life's business which con- 
sists in doing without. It is a fine discipline to 
give up for a week, or a month, or a year, some 
luxury which may be harmless in itself, but which 
is becoming too much of a necessity in our lives. 

Why Girls Remain Unmarried. 

The inquiry is often made, How is it that there 
are so many fine girls in our cities unmarried and 
likely to remain so ? AVe answer, Tobacco is one 
cause. In old times, when you could approach a 
young man within whispering distance without being 
nauseated by his breath, he used, when his day's 
work was over, to spend his evenings with some 
good girl or girls, either around the family hearth 
or in pleasant walks, or at some innocent place of 
amusement. The young man of the present day 
takes his solitary pipe and puffs away all his vitality 
till he is as stupid as an oyster, and then goes to 
some saloon to quench the thirst created by smok- 
ing ; and sheds crocodile tears every time his stock- 
ings are out at the toes, that u the girls nowadays 
are so extravagant, one can't afford to be mar- 
ried ! " 



OR, TOBACCO IX A NUTSHELL. 69 

Tobacco and Posterity. 
"A man," says a distinguished physician, "may 
poison his child before it is born through the nerves 
and blood of its mother." I have a friend who 
was an inveterate smoker until his first child was 
born ; that saved him. He knew that his breath 
would poison it, and he has abandoned the perni- 
cious weed, I trust forever. 

Growing Tobacco, 
If there is any dirtier work than raising tobacco, 
we should like to know it. A gum issues from green 
tobacco that covers everything that it comes in 
contact with. The practice of tobacco-growers is, 
to put on a shirt outside their clothes, and wear it 
without washing all through the season. We met 
recently a troop of men fresh from the tobacco- 
field who might pass for Hottentots. They looked 
as if they always burrowed in the ground, and in 
hands and face, as well as dress, were the color of 
woodchucks. 

How to Leave Off Using Tobacco. 

First, make the most of your will ; drdp tobacco 
and resolve never to use it again in any form. Call 
at an apothecary store and buy five cents' worth of 
gentian root, coarsely ground. Take as much after 
each meal, or oftener, as amounts to a common 
quid of fine-cut or cavendish ; chew it well and 



70 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 

swallow all the saliva. Continue this a few weeks, 
and you will come off conqueror. Then be thank- 
ful for freedom. 

Better to teach one youth the way 
To higher life and nobler thought 

Than own the wealth of untold mines 
By selfish hands and spirits wrought. 



OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 7 1 



How Alcohol was Discovered. 



How Alcohol was Discovered. 

The people who lived about seven hundred years 
ago thought that somewhere, if they only could find 
them, were two things that would greatly bless the 
world. First, something that would turn iron and 
all common metals into gold, and thus easily and 
greatly enrich the finder; second, an " elixir of 
life" which would prevent sickness and death, and 
keep those who drank it forever young. 

The men who tried many curious experiments in 
search of these two wonders were called alchemists. 
It is supposed that an Arab named Albucasis was 
thus led to discover alcohol by distilling it from 
wine. He thought it was the long-sought " elixir 
of life. " He drank heavily of it, urging others to 
do the same. His career of intoxication and vio- 
lence was short. He had found, not the " elixir of 
life," but the "water of death." 

Alcoholic Appetite. s 
Like all narcotic poisons, alcohol has the fatal 
power of creating an increasing appetite for itself, 



72 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER j 

that demands not only more frequent, but stronger 
and larger doses. The greater its work of ruin, the 
harder and almost impossible to overcome will be 
its demand. 

Amount of Alcohol in Fermented Liquors. 

In one hundred parts of the fermented juice of 
apples, or cider, there are from two to ten parts of 
alcohol. In one hundred parts of beer, the fer- 
mented juice of barley, there are from three to ten 
parts of alcohol. 

In one hundred parts of the fermented juice of 
grapes and other kinds of fruits, or wines, there are 
from six to twenty-five parts of alcohol. 

Strong Drink. 
However proud we may be of our powers of re- 
sistance, the universal testimony of experience is, 
that whatever tends to weaken our self-restraint is 
to be avoided. Fluids containing alcohol have 
shown such a wondrous ability to break down this 
power of self-control, and for creating a desire and 
appetite for such drink, that, more than all other 
influences combined, they have overcome the re- 
sistance of the will, and proved the allurement and 
destruction of thousands. Those who think they 
will stand, and those who others have thought would 
stand, have fallen by multitudes. Any one who 
would be on the safe side and wise side, should 
not run the risk of tampering with strong drink, for 



OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 7^ 

one reason : it involves in its consequences many 
more than ourselves. Character, education, health, 
happiness, and success demand that life should be 
carried through without indulgence in such a peril. 
The stomach, the liver, and the kidneys are gener- 
ally the first organs to be embarrassed in their func- 
tions by it. 

How the brain and nervous system become in- 
volved in the disturbance is too well known, and 
too frequently attested by what we hear and see in 
the darker walks of life to need extended com- 
ment. 



74 



THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER ; 




A Rich Rumseller's Declaration and Confession. 

Employees, you may call at the office one week 
from to-day and receive your pay for the last time 
in this establishment. I am closing up my busi- 
ness. Yes, I, gentlemen, I, who have dealt out 
liquid death and damnation, To be sure, I am a 
wholesale dealer, but that matters not. Look at 
the bitter desolation I have caused by selling liquor. 
My pockets are filled with gold. There are thou- 
sands of smitten victims, and out of their mouths, 
off their backs, and off their blighted fields, I and 
my chosen instruments have gathered a harvest of 
gold. I wish the pale housewife to know that I 
have a good percentage of all that was noble in 
the husband or kind father in yellow gold. There 



OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 75 

are hundreds in the poorhouse, squalid and de- 
formed, and out of all their ruin I gathered gold. 
There are hundreds who have heard the prison 
door, on its remorseless hinges, shrieking after them 
as they are entombed; and I helped put them 
there for gold. There are hundreds of new graves, 
made within the last twelve months, that are filled 
with sleepers, victims of my regulated traffic, and 
I helped put them there for gold. 

But, employees, one word more ! If you would 
like, I will employ you in another place and at an- 
other work. I have accumulated over five hundred - 
thousand dollars, and now I have come to a reali- 
zation of my great error. I am going to spend 
four hundred thousand in the cause of temperance, 
and I will give you a position helping me if you 
want, so you need not haul that load of rum to the 
station, but loose the bung of each barrel and pour 
the hellish contents into the gutter. 



76 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 




" Delirium Tremens burns the brain ; 

Each artery an adder seems ; 
A viper bites in every vein, 

And devils people all his dreams. 
Then Suicide, with poniard key, 

Unlocks a red gate to the grave ; 
The soul drifts to the boundless sea, 

Unbidden on its crimson wave." 



OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 



77 




The Sailor. 
I say, down with the pipe and the pot I 

No longer will I be their slave ; 
They would keep me forever a sot, 

And hurry me quick to the grave. 

I say, down with the pipe and the pot ! 

In spite of the land-lubber's sneer; 
Henceforward my earnings shall not 

Go for brandy, tobacco, or beer. 



78 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER \ 




I'm beat ! There, boys, I'll give it up, 

This cursed trick of drinking ! 
IVe nursed the devil long enough 

For my own good, I'm thinking. 
So here go bottle, pipe, cigar, 

The vile confederation ! 
Hurrah, my boys, I'm strong enough 

To beat the whole creation. 

IVe served the devil, boys, you know, 

In shape of pipes and brandy, 
Until he's come to count on me 

As something pretty handy. 
I know the cuss. Why, man alive, 

He wants me, soul and body ! 
His terms, you know them well enough, 

Tobacco, pipes, and toddy. 



OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 79 

Why am I a Teetotaler? 

1. Because ale, porter, gin, rum, brandy, wine, 
and whiskey all contain a portion of spirit or alco- 
hol, which is of a poisonous nature, and calculated 
to derange the human system. 

2. Because none of these drinks are ever useful, 
but always injurious to persons in health. 

3. Because drunkenness is our national beset- 
ting sin, and leads to idleness, quarrelling, swearing, 
fighting, stealing, adultery, murder, impiety, and 
almost every other sin. 

4. Because our drinking fashions produce a vast 
amount of poverty, domestic misery, insolvency, 
bankruptcy, crime, destruction of property, dis- 
ease, and premature death. 

5. Because a great deal of valuable land, time, 
labor, and capital is worse than wasted upon mak- 
ing, vending, and using these intoxicating drinks. 

6. Because 715 millions of money are annually 
expended upon the drunkard's drink in this land, 
which ought to be laid out in food and the manu- 
factures of the country. 

7. Because many millions of bushels of good 
grain are annually destroyed to make these poison- 
ous liquors. 

8. Because intemperance obstructs the progress 
of civilization, education, religion, and every useful 
reform. 

9. Because abstinence is sure and safe, but drink- 



80 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 

ing moderately is difficult and dangerous, and has 
led to all the drunkenness in the country. 

10. Because I find I cannot effectually warn the 
drunkard, unless I am an entire abstainer. 

ii. Because I like to join those who are exert- 
ing themselves to promote the reformation and 
happiness of the nation. 

12. Because it is important to set a safe example 
of perfect sobriety to our children, friends,, and 
associates. 

What Have You to Show for It? 

A young man commences at the age of twenty 
years to drink, and from twenty to twenty-three he 
drinks but one glass of beer a day, worth five cents 
a glass ; at twenty-three he will have spent $54.75 ; 
from twenty-three to twenty-five, two glasses a day, 
he will have spent $73 ; from twenty -five to thirty, 
three glasses a day, $273.75 I fr° m thirty to thirty- 
five, four glasses a day, $365 ; from thirty-five to 
forty, five glasses a day, $456.25. By this time he 
will have spent in all the sum of $1,222.75. 

Now, if another young man commences at twenty, 
and instead of spending the money named for beer 
each year, puts it out at seven per cent, interest, 
without any savings but this beer-money, he would 
be worth, at the age of forty years, $2,280, having 
saved his money, his character, his health, and per- 
haps his soul. 

Now, if you have been paying your money out 



OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 8 1 

for beer, what have you to show for it ? Are you 
any better, richer, happier for it ? Are you any 
healthier than your total-abstaining friend? Has 
your beer-drinking given you any better position in 
society? Are your family any better off for it in 
any way ? Does your drinking help you to lay up 
anything of any sort to offset the bank account 
you would have had if you had paid your beer- 
money to the cashier? Or do you expect by means 
of beer-drinking to lay up anything for yourself or 
your family in the future ? If so, what is it ? 

When you make a bargain there are always two 
values. You pay your money for a pair of shoes, 
and you have the shoes to show for it, and you can 
wear them while you are earning money to buy 
more ; but when you have paid your money for a 
glass of beer, and swallowed it, what have you to 
show for it ? Ten chances to one it makes you 
thirsty for another glass, and another, and you get 
a headache or a stupid feeling that does not help 
you work, and perhaps some other bad things, 
not worth paying for : but if you have any good 
thing to show for it, what is it ? 

Perhaps you have not yet drunk enough to count 
up much ; if so, now is your time to forestall the 
cost and make your bargain. Will you pay out 
your money for the beer and lose it, or will you 
lay it out so that you may have something to show 
for it ? 



82 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 

The Cost of Beer. 

Last year we made in this country over nine mil- 
lions of barrels of beer. This, at the usual retail * 
rate of thirty dollars per barrel, comes to more 
than $270,000,000, which the people pay out for 
their beer. 

It costs, perhaps, half that amount to make the 
beer and sell it. This includes cost of grain and 
other materials, and pay for labor of manufacturers, 
retailers, and employees. The other half is clear 
profit, and goes into the pockets of the brewers and 
saloon-keepers. No other business brings in more 
money. No wonder the brewers push it eagerly. 

But what these men make, the people lose. 
It is said that New York City alone pays for beer 
about $30,000,000 a year. The cost of making this 
beer is about $15,000,000, and that is clear loss. 
There is nothing better to show for it than noise, 
and broils, and stupidity, and drunkenness. And 
then it takes a deal of time to drink all this beer. 
Some say that the time thus lost amounts to as 
much as the drinker pays for his beer. This would 
be $30,000,000 for New York, which, added to the 
first cost of the beer, $15,000,000, makes a sheer 
loss of $45,000,000 annually for this one city. It 
is believed that the beer of every large city in this 
country costs more than the bread. This % amount 
of property and time cannot be lost and you and 
I be none the poorer for it. It makes rents and 



OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 83 

taxes higher, and these must be made up in higher 
rates for what people sell ; and so we all who use 
merchandise of any kind help to pay this beer bill. 
It is said that a small city of New Jersey spends 
#2,000 a day for beer. Do you wonder that it is 
bankrupt in the sum of $6,000,000? True, the city 
itself did not spend it, but her people did, and 
everybody felt the loss. If this beer money alone 
were turned into the city treasury, the debt would 
soon be paid off. A large item of cost to the city 
is the direct expense of taking care of the drinkers. 
It is stated that some years every arrest could be 
traced to drink. And this is but a fair specimen 
of the entire country. And the matter is growing 
worse continually. The brewers expect to make us 
drink 10,000,000 of barrels this year. 



Rum and Tobacco. 



FOOD BILL FOR SIX PERSONS COMPARED WITH A DRINK AND 
TOBACCO BILL FOR ONE PERSON. 



Compiled by Elizabeth Thompson, New York. 



I have ascertained that the outlay in one week 
for stimulants by the man who drinks and uses 
tobacco, is almost as much as the man of economic 
habits expends for food for himself, wife, and four 
children in the same time. 



84 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER ; 

COMPARISONS FOR EVERY DAY IN THE WEEK. 

SUNDAY — THREE MEALS FOR SIX PERSONS. 

Hominy, sugar sauce, meat, soup, bread, cakes, pud- 
ding, . 63 

RUM AND TOBACCO FOR ONE PERSON. 

Two beers, one gin, tobacco, cigars, treats, .... 55 

MONDAY — THREE MEALS FOR SIX PERSONS. 

Bread, steak, onions, rice, meat, potatoes, turnips, 
fruit, 65 

RUM, TOBACCO, TREATS, FOR ONE PERSON. 

Three beers, one whiskey, two cigars, two treats, . 55 

TUESDAY — THREE MEALS FOR SIX PERSONS. 

Oatmeal, milk, sugar, soup, pork, onions, potatoes, 

bread, 58 

RUM AND TOBACCO FOR ONE PERSON. 

Three gins, smoking and chewing tobacco, .... 39 

WEDNESDAY — three meals for six persons. 
Fried mush, syrup, corned beef, cabbage, bread, milk, 
butter, 55 

RUM AND TOBACCO FOR ONE PERSON. 

Two whiskeys, three beers, four cigars, paper chewing, 50 

THURSDAY — three meals for six persons. 
Oatmeal, milk, pork, beans, bread, cakes, fruit, sauce, 66 

RUM AND TOBACCO FOR ONE PERSON. 

Three beers, two brandies, three cigars, tobacco, . . 59 

FRIDAY — THREE MEALS FOR SIX PERSONS. 

Beef stew, bread, bean soup, mush, milk, syrup, cheese, 5 7 

RUM AND TOBACCO FOR ONE PERSON. 

Four beers, tobacco, cigars, treats, 55 

SATURDAY — three meals for six persons. 
Codfish and potatoes, cheese, soup, bread, rice, milk, 
fruit, vegetables, 53 

RUM AND TOBACCO FOR ONE PERSON. 

Three brandies, three treats, three cigars, .... 70 
Food for one week for six persons, . . . #4.17 
Rum, tobacco, and treats for one person, . . . $3.83 



OK, TOBACCO IX A NUTSHELL. 



85 




MALOY'S SALOON. 



WHAT TWO LITTLE GIRLS DID. 



" ^A/'HAT in the world are you going to do with 
that old thing? " said Katy Bland to a play- 
mate whom she met carrying a coarse sieve. 

" I'm taking it to Mrs. Weaver," replied the 
little girl, whose name was Ellen Hartley. 

" What does she want with an old sieve? " asked 
Katy. 



86 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER ; 

" Mother sent me this morning to see how her 
sick baby was," answered the little girl, and while I 
was there poor Mrs. Weaver said they were out of 
coal, but that if she had a sieve she could get 
enough from the ash heap in her yard to last for 
two or three weeks. So I'm going to lend her our 
ash-sieve." 

"Why doesn't Mr. Weaver buy a load of coal? 
It's a shame ! " said Katy. " He's at work over in 
the quarry, and gets a dollar and a half for every 
day's work. I've heard father say so." 

" He drinks. That's the reason," replied Ellen, 
cutting her words short, and speaking with an in- 
dignant emphasis. 

" What a dreadful thing it is to get drunk ! " said 
Katy, her face growing serious. " I wish there 
was no liquor, nor any taverns in the land. Why 
don't people shut them up ? They do no good and 
ever so much harm." 

"That's just what I said to father this morning," 
returned Ellen. 

"Didn't he say they ought to be shut up?" 

" No, not just that. I hardly know what he said. 
Something about letting every one be free to do 
right or wrong ; but I couldn't understand it." 

" I can tell you what I do understand," spoke 
out Katy, a warm flush coming into her face. 

"What?" asked her friend. 

" Why, that if Mr. Weaver could find no place 



OR, TOBACCO IX A NUTSHELL. 87 

where they sold liquor, he wouldn't get drunk ; 
and if he didn't spend his money for drink, he 
could buy coal, and not leave his wife to sift over 
an old ash-heap for something with which to make 
a fire. That I can understand as well as anybody. 
What's the use of these drinking-saloons, as they 
call them? Can anybody tell ? I'm sure I don't 
see. The baker gives us bread to eat, the shoe- 
maker shoes to wear, and all the store-keepers 
something good or useful for our money : but the 
saloon-keeper has only a fiery poison, as I once 
heard Mr. Adams say, for his customers, which 
they drink to their shame and sorrow. I'm only a 
little girl, but I can understand all this to be wrong. 
The people ought to shut up the grog-shops. If 
the drinking ones won't do it, the sober ones should. 
I'm sure it would be better ; for then the drinking 
ones would have to keep sober." 

" And the boys couldn't get any beer or whis- 
key," said Ellen. "What do you think! Only 
yesterday I saw Harry Jacobs coming out of Ma- 
"loy's saloon." 

"You did?" 

"Yes, indeed," answered Ellen. 

"Oh, that's dreadful, isn't it? He's such a nice 
boy." 

And the two little girls looked sorrowfully at 
each other. 

"If I was only a man," spoke up Katy, after 



53 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER j 

standing silent for a little while, "I'd do some- 
thing. I tell you I would ! " 

"What?" asked Ellen. 

" I don't know just what I would do ; but I'd do 
something. Just to think of all the men in town 
letting fifteen or twenty other men, who are too 
lazy to work, set up grog-shops and beer saloons to 
make people drunk. It isn't right no way you can 
think of it, and you can't make it right. Don't 
you suppose the men could stop this if they would ? 
A thousand men are stronger than twenty." 

" I'm so sorry for the boys," said Ellen. " Harry 
Jacobs is such a nice little fellow, and so is Will 
Lyon. Almost every day I see them coming out 
of Maloy's saloon. To think of their growing up 
and becoming drunkards ! I feel so badly about 
it that I can't help crying sometimes." And tears 
actually fell over the cheeks of this tender-hearted 
girl. 

"Oh my ! If we were men ! " exclaimed Katy, 
her face flushed with excitement. 

"But we are only little girls," answered Ellen, 
mournfully. 

" May be little girls could do something if they 
tried," suggested Katy. 

" I'd try, for one, hard enough, if I knew just 
what to- do," said Ellen. 

For a few moments the two children stood look- 
ing into each other's faces. 



OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 89 

" It just comes into my mind," said Katy, " what 
our Sunday-school teacher told us last Sunday. 
She said that God does good in the world by 
human agents ; that is, by men and women and 
children ; and that if we want to do good He will 
show us the way. And she said, too, that the poor- 
est and weakest little girl, with God and heaven on 
her side, was stronger than all the hosts of hell. 
Now, may be He will show us the way to do some- 
thing. Oh, if we could only make the fathers see 
the danger their sons are in, I'm sure they'd have 
all the saloons shut up. Mr. Jacobs is a lawyer, 
and makes great speeches ; and Mr. Lyon is rich 
and can do almost anything he pleases. Then, 
there is Mr. Perkins, our minister. I wonder why 
he doesn't preach against grog-shops. I guess, if 
he was to see his Judson going into Maloy's as I 
have, he'd have something to say. If we could 
just rouse them up, Ellen, there's no telling what 
might come of it." 

"Two little girls rouse up a whole town !" and 
Ellen smiled at the thought, but shook her head. 

"There's nothing like trying," answered Katy. 
" You may set a house on fire with a tiny match." 

"Ah, but then you have something to burn," re- 
plied Ellen. 

"And I should think there was something to 
burn here," said Katy. " Only get our minister, 
Mr. Jacobs, Mr. Lyon, and a dozen or two others 



90 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 

to see that their sons are in danger of becoming 
drunkards, and a fire will be kindled, I'm think- 
ing, fierce enough to burn up all the saloons in 
town." 

"You don't mean to have them set on fire, do 
you?" and Ellen's face grew troubled. 

"Why, no, of course not that. I was only using 
what our teacher calls a figure of speech. After 
you've been to Mrs. Weaver's with the sieve, come 
to our house, and we'll talk more about this. My 
mind's all full of it, and I just feel as if we might 
really do something." 

Ellen promised, and the young friends parted. 
Now, Katy was a bright, enthusiastic little girl, and 
when she set her mind upon doing anything, it was 
hard to turn her aside from her purpose. 

In all the town there was not just then, perhaps, 
a single person who felt so deeply its danger from 
liquor-selling, nor one who desired so ardently to 
remove the danger, as Katy Bland. The whole 
magnitude of this evil weighed like a mountain on 
her heart, and she almost panted with an eager 
desire for its destruction. 

When Ellen called to see Katy half an hour 
after they parted in the garden walk, she found her 
writing at a table in her own room. She looked 
up with a bright, earnest face, as Ellen came in, 
and cried out : 

"What do you think I'm doing? " 



OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 9 1 

" I can't guess/' said Ellen. 

" I'm writing to the editor of the Banner" 

"You!" 

"Yes, I, Katy Bland; or, rather, I'm writing 
for you and me both. For two little girls who 
can't understand why the people should let fifteen 
or twenty lazy men keep drinking-saloons instead 
of earning their living at some useful work. Let 
me read you what I have written," and Katy, with 
a fine flush on her cheeks, and a bright sparkle in 
her eyes, read : 

" Mr. Editor, — We are two little girls, and of 
course don't understand all about everything. 
Now, there is something going on in the town that 
puzzles us. It's something very bad, we think, 
and we write to ask you if there is no way in which 
this bad thing can be stopped. 

"Just around the corner, close by where we live, 
there is a drinking-saloon. Now, we've talked it 
over and over again, but we can't see any good in 
a drinking-saloon. If you know of any, we wish 
you would tell us in your paper. The baker and 
butcher, the shoemaker and tailor, the storekeeper, 
the lawyer, the doctor, and the minister, are all 
useful to us ; but we can't think of any use the 
saloon-keeper is to anybody. But, oh dear ! 
The harm he does, that is dreadful ! 

" Now, Mr. Editor, as near as we can come to 
it, there are about twenty saloons and grog-shops 



92 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER ; 

in our little town ; and twenty men at work, night 
and day, doing all they can to hurt and destroy. 

" If only the men who love liquor went to these 
saloons, it would be bad enough ; but when we see 
boys going in and out every day, it does seem so 
wicked that we are amazed it is allowed to go on, 
when it could be so easily stopped ; for, surely, two 
or three thousand people have the right to say 
whether twenty of their number shall hurt them or 
not. 

" Our minister never says a word against these 
saloons ; but if he had seen his son, not much 
older than we are, coming out of one of them, as 
we have, may be he would preach about the evil of 
drunkenness and liquor-selling. 

" Mr , the lawyer, knows how to talk to the 

people. May be, if he had seen his boy going in 
and coming out of a saloon daily, as we have, he 
would gather them together, and rouse them up 
with a fiery speech to a knowledge of their danger. 

a Mr. is very rich. He owns more prop-' 

erty than any other man in town. He has only one 
son, who, when his father dies, will be rich also. But 
if he grows up to be a drunkard, of what use will 
all his money be to him ? And he is in great dan- 
ger, Mr. Editor ; for he, too, goes in and out of 
the saloon we spoke about. We've seen it almost 
every day, and it makes us feel so sorry. 

" O, sir, if our minister and those two men 



OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 93 

would only go to work and stir up the people, all 
the saloons and grog-shops might be closed in less 
than a week ; and then their own sons and the 
sons of all the people would be safe. 

" Won't you publish our letter, Mr. Editor? We 
are only two little girls, and can't do anything our- 
selves ; but may be what we say will stir up the 
town. It doesn't look modest in us to seem to 
know more than men and women about this mat- 
ter, but we can't help that. It is so dreadful a 
thing to have nice little boys learning to drink and 
in danger of becoming drunkards, that we can't 
help crying out against the saloon-keepers, who do 
no good to anybody, and an awful amount of 

"Two Little Girls." 

"Now, what do you think of that?" asked 
Katy, as she finished reading.. 

"I'm afraid," answered Ellen, who was more 
timid than Katy, " that if the editor should pub- 
lish it, the minister, and Mr. Jacobs, and Mr. Lyon 
will be offended." 

" No names are given," said Katy, " and there 
are six or seven ministers in tow T n." 

" But Mr. Jacobs and Mr. Lyon will know they 
are meant by the lawyer who makes speeches, and 
by the richest man among us." 

"Well, so much the better," returned Katy, in a 
resolute tone. " If they know that they are meant, 



94 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER ; 

and that their sons are in danger, they will be more 
likely to do something " 

" May be the editor won't print it," said Ellen. 

" We can only try him. Our part is done when 
we send him the letter/' and Katy folded the paper 
she had written, and wrote on the envelope, " To 
the Editor of the Banner" 

On the next morning Katy and Ellen read, with 
quickly beating hearts, their communication in 
print. And they read, also, this note by the 
editor : 

" We invite the particular attention of our read- 
ers, one and all, to the communication in to-day's 
paper, signed 'Two Little Girls.' From the 
manuscript we are satisfied that it is just what it 
purports to be ; the artless, earnest appeal and pro- 
test of two children against the evil of dram-selling, 
with which our town is cursed. On first reading 
the letter we thought of laying it aside because of 
its reference, though not by name, to two or three 
prominent individuals. But a second reading and 
more careful thought led us to a different conclu- 
sion. We became deeply impressed with the idea 
that these children were moved by an impulse from 
heaven, that God was sending a message through 
them, and that we had no right to impede its 
utterance. So we print the letter word for word as 
we received it ; and we trust that every man and 
woman into whose hands it may come will read 



OR, TOBACCO IX A NUTSHELL. 95 

and ponder it well. It is a cry of warning our 
citizens will do well to heed.' , 

A murmur of surprise ran through the town. At 
first people talked half doubtfully one to another, 
but soon this one and that began to speak with 
decision and against the saloons. Every father 
who had sons became impressed with a sense of 
their danger; but none more strongly than Mr. 
Jacobs and Mr. Lyon, who did not mistake the ref- 
erence of the letter to themselves. On questioning 
their sons, they were both grieved and alarmed to 
find that they went almost every day to Maloy's or 
some other drinking- saloon, and spent a good deal 
of time there gambling in a small way with dice 
and cards. They had taken their first step in the 
road to ruin, and the hearts of their fathers trem- 
bled at thought of their peril. 

On the very next day the Banner contained a call 
for a town meeting to consider the question of 
shutting up the drinking saloons, and on the next 
Sunday every minister preached against them. 

Public sentiment, always so powerful for good or 
evil, took in this matter the right direction, and in 
less than two weeks every bar and dram-shop in the 
place was closed. 

And all this great and good work was begun by 
two little girls ; children who did not feel that they 
had any power in themselves to check the flood of 
evil sweeping in such a destructive current over 



g6 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER J 

their town. What seemed to them right, that they 
did ; ^nd God, who works for good through the 
weak as well as the strong, made them instruments 
of blessing, as He will make every one of us if we 
will, in singleness of heart, do the best we can to 
help the weak and save those who are in peril. 




OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 



97 




STORY OF THE ENGINEER. 



" T ET me put my name down first — I can't stay 
long ! " 

It was a red-ribbon meeting, and the man was a 
locomotive engineer, bronzed and strong, and hav- 
ing eyes full of deep determination. He signed his 
name in a bold, plain hand, tied a red ribbon in 
his button-hole, and as he left the hall he said : 

"As the Lord looks down upon me, I'll never 
touch liquor again ! " 

"Have you been a hard drinker?" queried a 
man who walked beside the engineer. 



gS THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 

"No. Fact is, I was never drunk in my life. 
I've swallowed considerable whiskey, but I never 
went far enough to get drunk. I shouldn't miss it 
or be the worse off for an hour if all the intoxicat- 
ing drink in the world was drained into the ocean." 

" But you seemed eager to sign the pledge." 

" So I was, and I'll keep it through thick and 
thin, and talk temperance to every man on the 
road." 

"You must have strong reasons." 

" Well, if you'll walk down to the depot, I'll tell 
you a story on the way. It hasn't been in the 
papers yet, and only a few of us know the facts. 

You know I run the night express on the B 

road. We always have at least two sleepers and a 
coach, and sometimes we have as many as two 
hundred passengers. It's a good road, level as a 
floor, and pretty straight, though there is a bad 
spot or two. The night express has the right o' 
way, and we make fast time. It's no rare thing 
for us to skim along at the rate of fifty miles an 
hour for thirty or forty miles, and we rarely go 
below thirty. One night I pulled out of Detroit 
with two sleepers, two coaches, and the baggage 
and mail cars. Nearly all the berths in both 
sleepers were full, and most of the seats in the 
coaches were occupied. It was a dark night, 
threatening all the time to rain, and a lonesome 
wind whistled around the cab as we left the city 



OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 99 

behind. We were seventeen minutes late, and that 
meant fast time all the way through. 

"Well," he continued after a moment, "every- 
thing ran along all right up to midnight. The main 
track was kept clear for us \ the engine was in good 

spirits, and we ran into D as smooth as you 

please. The express coming east should meet us 

fifteen miles \vest of D , but the operator at 

that station had failed to receive his usual report 
from below. That was strange, and yet it was not, 
and after a little consultation, the conductor sent 
me ahead. We were to keep the main track, while 
the other train would run in on the side track. 
Night after night our time had been so close that 
we did not keep them waiting over two minutes, 
and were generally in sight when they switched in. 

" When we left D we went ahead at a rat- 
tling speed, fully believing that the other train 

would be on time. Nine miles from D is the 

little village of Parto. There is a telegraph station 
there, but the operator has no night work. He 
closed his office and went home about nine o'clock, 
and any messages on the wires for him were held 
above or below until next morning. When I 
sighted this station I saw a red lantern swinging 
between the rails. Greatly astonished, I pulled up 
the heavy train, and got a bit of news that almost 
lifted me out of my boots. It was God's mercy, as 
plain as this big depot. It was the operator who 



IOO THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 

was swinging the lantern. He had been roused 
from sleep by the whistles of a locomotive, when 
there wasn't one within ten miles of him. He 
heard the toot ! toot ! toot ! while he was dressing, 
and all the way as he ran to the station, thinking 
he had been signalled. Lo ! there was no train 
there. Everything was as quiet as the grave. The 
man heard his instrument clicking away, and lean- 
ing his ear against the window, he caught these 
words as they went through to D : 

u ' For God's sake, switch the Eastern express off 
quick ! Engineer on the Western express crazy 
drunk, and running a mile a minute ! ' 

" The operator signalled us at once. We had 

left D nine miles away, and the message 

couldn't have caught us anywhere except at Parto. 
Six miles further down was the long switch. It 
was time we were there, lacking one minute. 
We lost two or three minutes in understanding the 
situation and in consulting, and had just got ready 
to switch in where we were when the head-light of 
the other train came in view. Great heavens ! but 
how that train was flying. The bell was ringing, 
sparks flying, and the whistle screaming, and not a 
man of us could raise a hand. We stood there on 
the main track, spellbound as it were. There 
wouldn't have been time, anyhow, either to have 
switched in or got the passengers out. It wasn't 
over sixty seconds before that train was upon us. 



OR, TOBACCO Es A NUTSHELL. IOI 

I prayed to God for a breath or two, and then shut 
my eyes and waited for death, for I hadn't the 
strength to get out of the cab. 

"Well, sir, God's mercy was revealed again. 
Forty rods above us that locomotive jumped the 
track, and was piled into the ditch in an awful 
mass. Some of the coaches were considerably 
smashed, and some of the people badly bruised, 
but no one was killed, and of course our train 
escaped entirely. Satan must have cared for Big 
Tom, the other engineer. He didn't get a bruise, 
but was up and across the fields like a deer, scream- 
ing and shrieking like a mad tiger. It took five 
men to bind him after he was run down, and to-day 
he is the worst lunatic in the State. 

"Tom was a good fellow," continued the engi- 
neer, after a pause, " and he used to take his glass 
pretty regularly. I never saw him drunk, but liquor 
kept working away on his nerves till at last the 
tremens caught him when he had a hundred and 
fifty lives behind his engine. He broke out all of 
a sudden. The fireman was thrown off the engine, 
all steam turned on, and then Tom danced and 
screamed, and carried on like a fiend. He'd have 
made awful work, sir, but for God's mercy. I'm 
trembling yet over the way he came down for us, 
and I'll never think of it without my heart jumping 
for my throat. Nobody asked me to sign the 
pledge, but I wanted my name there. One such 



102 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 

night on the road has turned me against intoxicat- 
ing drinks, and now that I have got this red ribbon 
on, I can talk to the boys with better face. Tom 
is raving, as I told you, and the doctors say he'll 
never get his reason again. Good night, sir, — my 
train goes in ten minutes." 

" Then dash the brimming cup aside, 
And spill its purple wine; 
Take not its madness to thy lip, 
Let not its curse be thine." 




OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL, 103 



NOT POVERTY, BUT BEER. 



BY MARY DWINELL CHELLIS. 



" TT'S no use to say any more about it. There 
are four children younger than I am, and 
father says I've had my share of schooling. We're 
all boys, and we wear out clothes awful fast ; mo- 
ther's always mending, but father complains be- 
cause she calls for new things so often. It seems 
to me I couldn't and wouldn't go into that horrid 
old mill ; but I've made up my mind to it, and the 
sooner I begin, the better. I wish father wasn't so 
poor." 

" I heard somebody say your father earned first- 
rate wages," responded Milton Holmes, to whom 
the above explanations and complaints were made. 

" I know he does," was replied. u He earns 
more than any other man in the shop, but he says 
it takes every cent of his money to pay the bills. 
I've thought it over and over a good many times, 
and I can't understand it." 

At that moment a scrap of printed paper drifted 
to the speaker's feet, and, without purpose in what 
he was doing, he took it from the ground and 
smoothed it listlessly until these words arrested his 



104 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 

attention : " It is > t ct poverty, but beer, which 
robs our children of knowledge." He read it 
again and again, while a new light dawned upon 
his mind. At length he gave the paper to his com- 
panion, who asked quickly : 

" Does your father drink beer ? " 

" Yes ; lots of it," answered Nathan Wilson. 

" Does he chew tobacco ? " 

" Lots of it. He always has his mouth full, un- 
less he's smoking, or eating, or drinking. I heard 
mother tell him this morning that she could sup- 
port the family on the money he spends for what 
does him more hurt than good. I couldn't think 
what she meant, but I guess I know now." 

" I guess you do. Beer and tobacco cost more 
than bread and coffee. I've heard a good many 
say that, and I've promised my mother never to 
taste of such stuff. " 

" Nobody ever asked me to promise. Wasn't it 
strange, though, that paper should happen along 
here just now ? I wonder how it escaped the rag- 
pickers." 

" So do I. What wretched work theirs is ! I 
should rather do anything else than grub round the 
streets as they do. See that old woman. There's 
a heap of rubbish waiting for her. Let us watch 
and see what she finds. We can sit down on that 
pile of bricks, and she won't know we're thinking 
about her." 



OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 105 

So saying, Milton Holmes walked toward the 
place indicated, while his schoolmate walked by 
his side thoughtfully, sadly, and, it must be con- 
fessed, with something like anger in the heart which 
beat so tumultuously. 

" Don't take it so hard," he said kindly, when 
they were fairly seated. " Mother says there's 'most 
always a way out of trouble, if you only go to work 
at it patiently and with a good will." 

" Your mother hasn't seen so much trouble as I 
have. If she had, she'd know better than to say 
that. There's trouble in the world that patience 
and hard work don't touch." 

These words startled the boys, who had forgot- 
ten that the old rag-picker was so near as to hear 
any remarks they might make. 

" Have you had a good deal of trouble ?" asked 
Nathan, springing to his feet. 

"Yes, I have, though 'tan't often I say anything 
about it. There was four in my family, and three 
of them were drunkards. Don't you think that 
would make trouble enough for the fourth one?" 

" Yes, ma'am, I know it would. Was that what 
made you so poor?" 

"Yes, just that and nothing else; and it's what 
makes other folks poor. I had two boys, and when 
they wa'n't any larger than you be, I thought they 
was the smartest boys anywhere round ; but they're 
gone." 



106 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER ; 

« Where ?" 

" I don't know ; I wish I did, though likely it 
an't best I should. Do you ever drink any kind 
of liquor?" 

" Not a drop/' answered Milton Holmes. 

"Do you?" she continued, turning to Nathan 
Wilson. 

"Is beer liquor?" he asked in response. 

" Yes, it is, and it's what begins the trouble. My 
boys begun with it, and finished with — but I don't 
know as they've finished yet." 

"Sit down and rest a minute, ,, said Nathan, 
pitying the poor woman. " You must be dreadful 
tired." 

" I don't know as I am. My body's got so it 
keeps going without being tired, but it hurts in 
here," and she pressed her hand to her heart with 
a quick, convulsive motion, while her face grew 
deathly pale. 

Thus she was forced to drop the implements of 
her trade and accept the proffered seat, where she 
rested for a few minutes. 

" Have you got any home?" asked Milton, as 
she reached down for her sack and hook. 

"I've got a place where I stay," she replied. 
" It's better than some have, but it an't home. I've 
been cold and hungry a good many times, and I 
expect to be a good many times more, but thank 
God I ha'n't any little children to starve with me. 



OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. 107 

Don't taste of beer, boys. Don't for your souls' 
sakes. Don't begin on the wrong track. I didn't 
expect to come to this. Don't you suppose I hate 
the dirt and garbage? There couldn't anybody 
hate it any worse. But there was three drunkards 
in my family, and they dragged down the fourth 
one. Don't forget what I've told you." 

A moment more, and this woman seemed in- 
tent only upon the rubbish before her, and with 
lingering gaze the boys bade her a silent farewell. 

Half an hour later Nathan Wilson entered the 
room where his mother was at work, holding in his 
hand a scrap of paper, while his flushed face and 
tightly-compressed lips betrayed the excitement he 
did not care to conceal. 

" I've found all about it, and it's a shame for 
father to spend his money as he does. He needn't 
tell me I must go to work, so to give the other 
children a chance. If I go into that greasy old 
mill, it will be because father cares more for beer 
and tobacco than he does for me. He earns 
enough to keep us all." 

" Why, Nathan, what is the matter with you? I 
never heard you talk so before." 

" I didn't know enough to. Now my eyes are 
opened, and they won't shut again very soon. Hear 
this, mother." And the boy read aloud the words 
which had so deeply impressed him. " That's the 
truth, and the whole truth," he added, emphatically. 



108 THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER \ 

" I'm going to print it in large German text, and 
hang it opposite my bed, where I can see it every 
day of my life ; and another thing, I never'll taste 
a drop of beer, nor let either of my brothers, if I 
can help it. I won't use tobacco, either, and when 
I can have my own wages I'll save a part of every 
dollar I earn, you see if I don't." 

" I hope you will," answered Mrs. Wilson in a 
husky voice, as she brushed a tear from her eye. 

For the remainder of the day Nathan occupied 
himself with printing, finishing the last letter just 
as the waning light warned him that night was at 
hand. In his haste he had omitted some orna- 
mental lines, but this did not matter to himself or 
to those who watched every movement of his pen. 

That evening he did not speak to his father. 
Indeed, the household was strangely quiet, and as 
Mr. Wilson looked around upon his boys he won- 
dered at their unusual silence. He had engaged 
work for Nathan, but he hesitated to speak of it. 
Something in his son's face troubled him ; and all 
the more the next morning when he felt obliged to 
tell of the arrangements he had made. Even then 
no word was spoken in reply, although some sig- 
nificant glances greatly annoyed him. Before the 
day closed, a remonstrance from Nathan's teacher 
increased his annoyance ; but all this did not 
change his purpose or his manner of living. His 
habits were firmly established. His course was 



OR, TOBACCO IN A NUTSHELL. IO9 

steadily downward, while his children, one after 
another, were taken from school to earn a scanty 
pittance, because he had squandered a fortune 
upon the gratification of his depraved appetites. 

He taught his boys no lessons of temperance or 
frugality. Yet as they grew to manhood people 
marvelled at their integrity and thrift. A scrap of 
paper drifted through the city streets had done 
more and better for them than he who was respon- 
sible for their existence in a world where the desti- 
nies of children are largely dependent upon their 
parents. 

Soiled and discolored grew the talismanic words, 
yet they retained their conspicuous position until 
transferred to a new home where life is ordered 
after higher standards. 

In any city or large manufacturing town where 
men find constant employment, if you will take the 
trouble to trace to their homes their children who 
attend school only the limited time prescribed by 
law, you will find in nearly every instance where 
the father is living that he spends for tobacco and 
beer or stronger liquors a large proportion of his 
own earnings. 

The children of our country have a right to 
happy homes and the advantages of education, 
and every plea for total abstinence from all which 
can intoxicate is a plea for these rights, sacred and 
inalienable as is the liberty of which we boast. 



IIO THE LITTLE BLACK MASTER; 



"Now, -to all the boys who have read this 
I have a word to say, [book 

Give heed unto my little speech, 

And my advice obey. 
Be honest, fair, sincere, and square 

In all you have to do, 
And let me tell you ere I close, 
I neither smoke nor chew. 
Do you ? 

" Then let me say to men and boys, 
Go forward in your might, 
With heart aglow hoe out your row, 

And work for truth and right. 
Perhaps you wish I'd close my speech. 

Well, I am nearly through ; 
And let me say to you again, 
I neither smoke nor chew. 
Do you?" 




8 951 



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